The Workers' Advocate

WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA

Volume 14, Number 1

January 1, 1984 $1.00

Documents of the Second Congress of the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA

To meet the challenge of the capitalist offensive, the times demand one thing: Steadfast revolutionary work

[Graphic.]

Workers of all countries, unite!

Documents of the Second Congress of the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA

--Fall, 1983--

Fight the Capitalist Offensive --

Build the Independent Movement of the Working Class!

Against Social-Democracy and Liquidationism --

For Steadfast Revolutionary Work!

Organize the Proletariat, Build the Marxist-Leninist Party!

Uphold the Red Banner of Communism --

Back to the Classic Teachings of Marxism-Leninism!

CONTENTS

COMMUNIQUE ON THE SECOND CONGRESS OF THE MLP,USA

I. On the Domestic Situation

• A. Introduction: For Steadfast Revolutionary Work Against the Capitalist Offensive
• B. Fight Reaganite Reaction
• C. The Fraud of the Democratic Party 'Opposition'
• D. Build the Independent Movement of the Working Class
• E. The Socialist Revolution, Goal of the Class Struggle
• F. The Economic Crisis, Capitalism in Decay
• G. Against the Capitalist Cultural Offensive

II. REVOLUTIONARY WORK IN THE MASS MOVEMENTS

• A. Introduction: The MLP, the Party of Revolutionary Action
• B. The Workers' Movement
• C. The Struggle Against Militarism and Imperialist War
• D. The Struggle Against Racism and National Oppression
• E. The Struggle Against the Oppression of Women

III. ORGANIZE THE PROLETARIAT, BUILD THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY

• A. The History of the Fight to Build the Political Party of the Working Class
• B. On Party-Building
• C. The Struggle Against Liquidationism and Merger With Social-Democracy

IV. ON THE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION

• A. Introduction: The Struggle Between Exploiter and Exploited, Oppressor and Oppressed, Lies Behind the Tangle of World Events
• B. Solidarity With the Workers and Peasants of Central America
• C. Against the Criminal U.S. Invasion of Grenada
• D. Salute the Chilean Workers and Youth in Struggle Against the Fascist Pinochet
• E. U.S. and Israeli Occupiers, Get Out of Lebanon
• F. The Racist Regime of Israeli Zionism and the Palestinian Revolution
• G. In Support of the Black People of South Africa Against the Racist Apartheid Regime
• H. In Support of the Filipino People's Struggle Against the U.S.-Marcos Dictatorship
• I. The Crisis of the Polish Capitalist Regime Exposes the Bankruptcy of Revisionism
• J. On the Revolutionary Struggle in the Oppressed and Dependent Countries: The National Liberation Movement, the Democratic Revolution and the Socialist Revolution
• K. On the Upsurge in the International Movement Against Imperialist War
• L. Soviet Social-imperialism -- Enemy of the Revolution and Socialism
• M. Revisionist China and the Counter-Revolutionary U.S.-China Alliance
• N. Solidarity With Socialist Albania, the Only Genuinely Socialist Country in the World Today

V. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST REVISIONISM AND SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY

• A. Against Soviet Revisionism
• B. Against Chinese Revisionism
• C. Against Trotskyism
• D. Against Social-Democracy

VI. ON THE INTERNATIONAL MARXIST-LENINIST MOVEMENT

• A. The Second Congress Salutes the Marxist-Leninist Communists of the World
• B. Work for the Strengthening of the International Marxist-Leninist Movement
• C. On the Relations Between the Marxist-Leninist Parties
• D. On the Communist Party of Canada (M-L)

COMMUNIQUE ON THE SECOND CONGRESS OF THE MLP,USA

- Fall, 1983 -

To meet the challenge of the capitalist offensive, the times demand one thing: steadfast revolutionary work

The Second Congress of the Marxist-Leninist Party was convened in the fall of 1983. It met at a time when the U.S. stands at the brink of big class battles. It is a time when the capitalist bourgeoisie is on a Reaganite rampage, when the revolutionary path is neither easy nor fashionable, and when the fainthearted cower around the fringes of the bloodstained Democratic Party. But it is also a time when the class lines are sharpening to a fine point, when the working masses are profoundly skeptical of the old reformist leaders, and when all the prerequisites for a new mass upsurge are maturing.

In this difficult period, when the battle lines are being drawn but the masses are often stunned by the ferocity of the capitalist offensive and handcuffed by the treachery of the reformist leaders, the Second Congress spoke up for the proletariat and all toilers. It put forward the revolutionary alternative to slavish submission to this capitalist hell. It looked back with pride at the firm stand and solid work of the Party in the four years since its founding at the First Congress, and it took, with supreme confidence in Marxism-Leninism and the historic mission of the proletariat, a series of daring decisions to direct the work in the future.

The Second Congress raised four main slogans:

FIGHT THE CAPITALIST OFFENSIVE -- BUILD THE INDEPENDENT MOVEMENT OF THE WORKING CLASS!

AGAINST SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY AND LIQUIDATIONISM -- FOR STEADFAST REVOLUTIONARY WORK!

ORGANIZE THE PROLETARIAT, BUILD THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY!

UPHOLD THE RED BANNER OF COMMUNISM -- BACK TO THE CLASSIC TEACHINGS OF MARXISM- LENINISM!

The Second Congress resolutely declared: "To meet the challenge of the capitalist offensive, to make the necessary preparations in organization and consciousness for the coming class battles, the times demand one thing: steadfast revolutionary work."

Fight the Capitalist Offensive -- Build the Independent Movement of the Working Class!

The 1980's have opened with the capitalists running amok against the working masses. There is a capitalist offensive of starvation, militarism, racism and lies against the working people at home. And there is stepped-up warmongering, intervention, CIA subversion and lies against the working people of other countries.

The Marxist-Leninist Party is the party of revolutionary action, the party of the class struggle, and it has thrown itself heart and soul into battle against the capitalist offensive. It leads the masses to rise up against oppression and exploitation. The Second Congress summed up the lessons of the struggle and charted out the path ahead. One of the major tasks of the Congress was the preparation of resolutions setting forth the revolutionary alternative for use by activists and class conscious workers. These resolutions describe the current political situation, the tasks of revolutionary work in the mass movements, the role of proletarian organization and party-building, the international situation, and the tasks for strengthening the international Marxist-Leninist movement. The Congress discussed them thoroughly, mandated a number of improvements, and unanimously approved these resolutions, which will play an important role in providing orientation for the class struggle in the U.S. today.

The Second Congress brought the class basis of politics to the fore. Reaganism and the capitalist offensive are the bipartisan program of the capitalist class. Democrat and Republican, liberal capitalist and conservative capitalist, are united in waging war on the working masses, slashing wages, arming the Pentagon to the hilt and stepping up racist attacks. The Democrats and Republicans, however, also have their own specific roles in the overall capitalist program. The Democrats have been given the job of being the main deceiver of the working masses. They present themselves as the "party of labor and the minorities" in order to paint up each capitalist atrocity, each Reaganite proposal, with a liberal facade and thus mislead and pacify the masses.

Today the American working class still finds itself mainly ensnared in the chains of bourgeois politics. For decades the liberal politicians, the labor bureaucrats, the social-democrats, the revisionists, and the other reformists have worked day and night to tie the workers' movement and all popular struggles to the coattails of the capitalist politicians. This system of class collaboration has been the main factor tying the masses down in the face of the Reaganite attacks. Breaking the grip of the capitalist parties and building the independent movement of the working class is the immediate task of the fight against the capitalist offensive.

Building the independent movement of the working class is decisive because the working class is the truly revolutionary class which can defeat the capitalist reaction. Because of its revolutionary dynamism and stamina, its capacity for organization, and its economic position and numbers, the working class is the oppressed class with the greatest potential strength in history. The working class must stand up to play its historic role as the champion of all the exploited and oppressed. It must place a mighty proletarian stamp on all the struggles of the masses against exploitation, reaction and war. The degree to which the working class organizes itself and rises in struggle, the degree to which it establishes its political independence in the struggle against the capitalists, will determine whether or not the capitalist offensive is defeated. It is this that will determine whether the fruits of the mass struggles are frittered away, or whether they serve to build up the forces for the socialist revolution which will emancipate the working masses from capitalist exploitation and oppression once and for all.

Against Social-Democracy and Liquidationism -- For Steadfast Revolutionary Work!

The capitalists themselves are aware of the great potential for struggle that resides in the working class. They see the storm of indignation that is building up in the hearts of the oppressed. They are building more and more prisons, passing harsher and harsher laws and organizing racist gangs and fascist storm troopers, but they know that this alone cannot keep the working masses down. So they are making more and more use of the reformist forces to misdirect, divert, disorganize and demoralize the working masses. Reformism does not mean improving the conditions of the masses; on the contrary, the vital role that reformism has played in the capitalist offensive shows that reformism means collaborating with the bourgeoisie in suppressing the mass struggle and implementing the capitalist program. The social-democrats, reformists, labor bureaucrats and the bourgeois misleaders of the oppressed nationalities are a screen to divert the anger of the masses.

The Second Congress denounced the treacherous role of the social-democratic and revisionist forces.

The capitalists have had a special fondness for social-democracy for decades. In the situation where the masses are more and more disgusted with the bourgeois politicians, the social-democrats make it their job to give the Democratic Party a "socialist" tinge and to assure the workers that the Democratic Party hacks are really on their side. The social-democrats perform the same service for the labor bureaucrats, who are rabid capitalist agents and strikebreakers in the workers' movement. All in all, the social-democrats are nothing but firefighters for the bourgeoisie, dressing up the capitalist program in "socialist" colors and fighting tooth and nail against the political independence of the working masses.

The Second Congress showed that liquidationism -- working to obliterate (liquidate) the independent organization of the working class -- is today the main feature of all the revisionist and opportunist currents in the revolutionary movement. The pro-Soviet revisionists, the pro-Chinese revisionists and the trotskyites have, despite their quarrels, a common platform of liquidationism and merger with social-democracy. The revisionist and trotskyite liquidators accommodate themselves to social-democracy, merge with social-democracy in the "left" wing of the Democratic Party, and adopt the traditional social-democratic style and methods.

The maintenance of a revolutionary stand is impossible without a relentless struggle against social-democracy and liquidationism.

The Second Congress also noted that, in those situations where the masses have gone to the left and sections of activists have become disgusted with various of the more blatant capitulationist stands of the social-democrats and of the revisionist liquidators, a trend has generally come up that sees itself as to the left of the reformists, but which refuses to break with them. This trend, which is composed of diverse elements, can be generally characterized with regard to its ideology and political practice as "left" social-democracy, although it does not usually call itself that. Activists under the influence of such "left" social-democratic ideas are willing, to a greater or lesser extent, to take up the more popular militant slogans, but they still cherish illusions in the "left" wing of the Democratic Party and they keep their activities within the general bounds of what is acceptable to the reformist forces. The Second Congress showed that breaking the influence of the "left" social- democratic ideology is part and parcel of the fight for the political independence of the working class, part and parcel of the fight against social-democracy and liquidationism.

The work of the Marxist-Leninist Party has been a beacon against the opportunism of the liquidationist and social-democratic trends. The Marxist-Leninist Party has persevered in steadfast revolutionary struggle, while the opportunists, as fair-weather "revolutionaries," are reveling in despondency and renegacy, are denouncing the revolutionary traditions from the mass upsurge that reached its height in the 1960's and early 1970's, and are cowering behind the liberals, the labor bureaucrats and any bourgeois who is willing to throw them a crumb. It is not difficult to be a "revolutionary" when the revolutionary movement is at its height, when everybody talks about revolution just because they are carried away, because it is the fashion, and sometimes even out of direct careerist motives. It is far more difficult -- and of far greater value -- to be able to champion the interests of the revolution when the mass upsurge is not yet present. It is far more difficult -- and of far greater value -- to be able to work for the revolution by agitation among the masses, by theoretical work and through building organization, during the preparatory period when the majority of the masses do not yet appreciate the need for direct revolutionary action. This is the task which the revolutionary vanguard, rallied around the Marxist-Leninist Party, has taken upon itself and handled with skill and heroism in the first years of the 1980's. It is this work which is essential to clear the way for a new mass upsurge and to ensure that the mass struggle is not wasted, but is used to establish the class independence of the working masses.

The Second Congress held that the Marxist-Leninist Party has been able to uphold the banners of class struggle and revolution because it has known how to maintain close contact with the masses. The Second Congress opposed both those who renounce the revolution and the phrasemongers who, in the name of revolution, denounce work among the masses. These phrasemongers are nothing but "liquidators from the left," whose "revolutionary" words are nothing but anarchist posturing to hide their agreement with the other liquidators on all major questions of political practice. The Marxist-Leninist Party, on the other hand, has known how to judge the mood of the masses and find methods of approach to them so that, even in the midst of difficult periods, it is possible to carry out revolutionary agitation and to fight the capitalists and their opportunist servants.

Organize the Proletariat -- Build the Marxist-Leninist Party!

Steadfast revolutionary work requires the building of solid organization. The highest form of class organization is the proletarian political party, the Marxist-Leninist Party itself. The Second Congress stressed that the specific tasks of building up the proletarian party and rallying the masses around it must not be neglected in the general work of building up the independent political movement of the working class. On the contrary, without a political party of its own, the working class can not constitute itself as a class for itself, a class with its own independent class aims. The extent to which the working class consolidates its political party and acts as a unified force under its leadership is, in the final analysis, the extent to which it has achieved an independent class stand. The Second Congress was a resounding call to persevere on the road of party-building.

The founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party was the result of a decade of struggle against all anti-party trends. It was a struggle to uphold the Marxist-Leninist teachings on party-building and to build up the proletarian vanguard in the midst of the mass struggle. But, as the First Congress itself had pointed out, the founding of the Party was not the end of the struggle on the question of party-building, but the beginning of a new and wider campaign to imbue the proletariat with the party concept.

The early 1980's have indeed seen an intensification of the struggle over the question of party-building. The essence of liquidationism is its hostility to the very idea of the building of the Leninist proletarian revolutionary party of a new type. Previously various of the opportunist groupings paid lip service to the need for the party and founded their own deviationist "parties." But the last few years have seen various of these groups dissolving outright, leaving their members to float as individuals in the "left" wing of the Democratic Party. Others continue to exist, but only as loose groupings on the fringe of social-democracy.

The resolutions of the Second Congress stressed the need to establish solid proletarian organization and spread the party concept widely among the proletariat and the revolutionary activists. They included a brief history of the working class movement, showing that the ideas of Marxism and the banner of the class struggle have deep roots in the American working class movement. The history of the American working class movement shows that every major historical advance of the American working class has required both the mass upsurge and the work of the Marxists in the building of independent proletarian organization. It is, in the final analysis, the history of the struggle of the workers to break free from the influence of the capitalist parties and to establish and build up their own working class party.

The resolutions of the Second Congress also uphold the principle of democratic centralism and explain the Leninist organization of the party. All the resolutions, furthermore, describe the tasks of revolutionary work in the mass movements in close connection to the tasks of party-building.

The Second Congress also discussed the current situation in inner-party life. It revised the General Rules of the Party, maintaining the basic structure of the Party but taking into account new developments in party life. And it elected the new Central Committee.

Uphold the Red Banner of Communism -- Back to the Classic Teachings of Marxism-Leninism!

Without a revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement. The workers' movement faces many complex questions today in its struggle against the bourgeoisie. Marxist-Leninist theory is an essential weapon to answer these questions. Marxism-Leninism is not some hidebound catechism. It is above all a guide to revolutionary work. It is the revolutionary science of the working class, providing workers and activists with consciousness of the socialist goal of the revolution and a comprehensive summation of the experience of the world revolutionary movement.

The struggle on the theoretical front has reached new intensity in the last few years. The liquidators are all renouncing the Marxist-Leninist theory, moaning that they don't know what Marxism is, that they can't apply it to the U.S., that it is the source of their difficulties, that they must "critically reexamine'' the experience of the epoch-making October Revolution of the Bolsheviks, and so forth. In response, the Marxist-Leninist Party has upheld the red banner of communism and issued the slogan "Back to the classic teachings of Marxism-Leninism!'' Again and again, at each turning point, and facing each perplexing new problem, the Party has returned to the classic principles of Marxism-Leninism. As the revolutionary experience of the Party has deepened, so has its understanding of the Marxist-Leninist classics, which has always pointed the Party in the right direction and helped it move forward. Loyalty to Marxism-Leninism has been one of the decisive sources of the strength and vitality of the Party and of its iron unity.

The Second Congress reviewed the work of the Party on the theoretical front. Particularly notable, since the First Congress, has been the work to apply Marxism-Leninism to current problems of revolutionary work in the mass movements, the denunciation of liquidationism, the discussion of the united front, the upholding of the experience of the Great October Socialist Revolution of the Bolsheviks, the refutation of the liquidationist, petty-bourgeois nationalist and Maoist theories of the leadership of the Communist Party of Canada (M-L), and the participation in the discussion of the vexed questions of the international Marxist-Leninist movement. The Second Congress stressed the need to step up the fight in defense of Marxist-Leninist principles and took a series of decisions to reinforce the application of the classic teachings of Marxism-Leninism to the problems of today.

Another essential feature of communism is proletarian internationalism. A permanent feature of the work of the Marxist-Leninist Party has been its enthusiasm for the world revolutionary movement. The Second Congress declared that:

"The struggle between exploiter and exploited, oppressor and oppressed, lies behind the tangle of world events.

...On one side stands the old world of capitalist exploitation, reaction, imperialism and aggressive war. On the other side stands the world of revolutionary struggle, of the working masses who are striving for a new world without exploitation, oppression and enslaving wars.''

The Resolutions of the Second Congress denounced world imperialism, including the two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, and the lesser imperialist powers. They laid special stress on thoroughly denouncing the crimes of "our own" U.S. imperialists throughout the world. They hailed the world proletarian movement, the revolutionary movements in the oppressed and dependent countries and the international upsurge of the anti-war movement in the imperialist metropolises. And they declared the Party's resolute support for socialist Albania, the only genuinely socialist country in the world today, and for the Party of Labor of Albania.

The Second Congress stressed that the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA is but one contingent of the world Marxist- Leninist communist movement. It sent its greetings to the Marxist-Leninists of the world, who fight bravely against the world offensive of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist-revisionist crusade against Marxism-Leninism. It discussed the current situation in the international Marxist-Leninist movement and set forth the active stand of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA towards strengthening the international movement. It discussed the vexed questions of the contemporary world movement and held that they can only be resolved through the application of the classic teachings of Marxism-Leninism. And the Second Congress called for the intensification on the world scale of the struggle of the international Marxist-Leninist movement against the Soviet, Chinese and other revisionist currents and against the pressure of liquidationist and petty-bourgeois nationalist ideas.

The Second Congress sent the fraternal Communist Party of Labor of the Dominican Republic its deepest condolences over the death of Comrade David Onelio Espaillat. Comrade Onelio died earlier this year after a long life devoted to the revolutionary struggle of the Dominican workers and peasants. While imprisoned by the reaction, Comrade Onelio contracted tuberculosis and his health was ruined. Nevertheless, upon release from prison, he continued his revolutionary activities and was a founding member and one of the leaders of the Communist Party of Labor. His memory will live on to inspire future generations of revolutionary fighters.

The Second Congress also enthusiastically endorsed the work to make the stand of the Nicaraguan Marxist-Leninists, the Movement of Popular Action (ML), MAP-ML, known in the U.S. At this point, with CIA mercenaries raiding Nicaragua and U.S. imperialism poised for an all-out invasion to crush the Nicaraguan revolution, support for the Nicaraguan people takes on added importance. The Nicaraguan Marxist-Leninists are the vanguard of the Nicaraguan toilers, who are fighting valiantly against U.S. aggression, against the treachery of the Nicaraguan national bourgeoisie and against the vacillations of the Sandinista leadership. Support for the Marxist-Leninist forces strengthens immensely the solidarity movement with the Nicaraguan people and is an important part of the work to strengthen ties in the international Marxist-Leninist movement.

Hail the Second Congress of the Marxist-Leninist Party!

The Second Congress was a congress that took a series of decisions with far-reaching impact for the work of the Party in the coming years. It was a congress of unity and a congress of revolutionary fervor.

Let the rich tremble at the doom and gloom that confronts them, at the sight of their capitalist system bogged down in economic crisis, unending inter-imperialist rivalry, racism and decay. Let the fainthearted cower under the supposed protection of the liberal imperialists and the Democratic Party of the millionaires. The class conscious proletariat, for its part, is organizing and preparing itself for the great storms that lie ahead.

Let all working people unite in the class struggle against the exploiters and oppressors. Let the perspective of the socialist revolution inspire and encourage the downtrodden. For the day is coming when the proletariat, at the head of all the working people, will rise up to smash to dust the iron chains of bourgeois slavery, the chains of starvation, militarism, imperialism, racism and exploitation. The working class is organizing itself as an independent force, and it will rush forward on the road of proletarian revolution to build a new world, a world free of misery and oppression, free of the exploitation of man by man. Despite the capitalist clouds that now cover the sky, the revolutionary ferment among the masses is growing and the new socialist sun is preparing to emerge.

--Issued by the Central Committee according to the instructions of the Second Congress

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I. On the Domestic Situation

A. Introduction: For Steadfast Revolutionary Work Against the Capitalist Offensive

All the contradictions gripping U.S. capitalist society are intensifying. With every passing day the exploitation of labor by capital becomes more severe. The chasm between the rich and the poor grows ever wider. And the plague of economic depression adds to its list of tens of millions of victims. From top to bottom the U.S. imperialist system is being wrenched and torn by internal and external contradictions. Externally, it is caught up in the maelstrom of the world crisis, enmeshed in inter-imperialist conflicts, and pounded by the revolutionary struggles all over the globe. Meanwhile at home it suffers from the insurmountable contradictions that are built into the monopoly capitalist system of exploitation and is confronted by the resistance of the working masses.

To cope with the crisis, the monopoly capitalist rulers are escalating their offensive against the working masses. The capitalists are demonstrating that strikebreaking and hunger is their only answer to the economic woes. The process of fascization is deepening as the government unleashes brutal racism and police measures to stifle the opposition. As well, the U.S. imperialists are engaged in aggression across the four corners of the globe and are in an unprecedented arms buildup to pave the way for their ultimate solution to the crisis -- an imperialist world war against revolution and against their Soviet social-imperialist rivals. In unleashing this offensive against the masses, the bourgeoisie is not showing its strength, but its inner weakness and desperation.

The fires of resistance are smoldering among the workers, among the black people and the other oppressed nationalities, among the young people and among all the exploited and downtrodden masses. The working people are profoundly concerned about the situation. A deep hatred for the rich exploiters is spreading. The deepening of the class contradictions is bound to fan the flames of open mass struggle. No timetable can be set in advance. But it can be stated for certain that great social upheavals and class storms are in the works.

The present situation poses a great challenge for the Marxist-Leninists, class conscious workers and revolutionaries. This is no time for despair about the difficult situation. Nor is it time to sit back and wait for the deepening of the crisis itself to automatically bring about a change for the better. To meet the challenge of the capitalist offensive, to make the necessary preparations in organization and consciousness for the coming storms, the times demand one thing: steadfast revolutionary work.

B. Fight Reaganite Reaction

For three years now the capitalist offensive has been headed up by the hated administration of Ronald Reagan. This is a government of brutal capitalist reaction, of all-out war on the workers and oppressed.

The Reagan regime stands for hanger and capitalist slave driving. As the man who crushed the PATCO strikers, Reagan is the chief whip hand in the capitalists' "reindustrialization" drive to squeeze the workers with job elimination, speedup, wage cuts and strikebreaking. Reaganomics has slashed to the bone the already meager social programs for the unemployed and the poor, while lavishing the capitalist parasites with tens of billions in tax breaks and handouts. Reagan's answer to all economic woes is the unrestrained exploitation of the workers, starvation for the poverty-stricken, and unlimited plunder of the whole country -- all for the maximum profits of the capitalist exploiters.

The Reagan regime stands for vile racism and bigotry against the black people and all oppressed nationalities. Reagan was the favorite candidate of the Ku Klux Klan, and his administration has lived up to the expectations of his savage racist friends. It is working overtime to enforce strict segregation of the schools; to throw black workers out of the work places; to unleash terror against the immigrant workers; and to incite racist police attacks and the racist and fascist gangs.

The Reagan regime stands for the buildup of the police state. It has introduced a string of laws directed against strikers, demonstrators and progressive activists. Its answer to the looming mass struggles of the working people is the police jackboot -- to build up the police forces and prisons, and to unleash the FBI and the CIA against the mass movements and revolutionaries.

And finally the Reagan regime stands for unrestrained war preparations and imperialist aggression. It is a government of rabid jingoistic hatred for the peoples of other countries, of the big stick of imperialist intervention from Lebanon and Grenada to El Salvador and Nicaragua, and of earnest preparations for a "winnable" nuclear slaughter.

It must be stressed that this Reagan program of hunger, racism, reaction and war is not some aberration but is the general program of monopoly capitalism. Reaganism not only has the support of the fanatical "Moral Majority" right-wing fringe; it has the solid backing of the ruling capitalist class as a whole. It is the bipartisan program of both the Republicans and the Democrats, the two big parties of monopoly capital. The present capitalist offensive was launched under the Democratic Carter administration, and it will not come to an end with the 1984 elections, no matter what their outcome.

The Reagan regime marks a qualitative deepening of capitalist reaction. It marks the stepped-up process of fascization of bourgeois rule that is being carried out under the signboard of "American democracy." For decades the bourgeoisie has labored to spread the illusion that, despite any flaws that their system may have, at least in capitalist America the working people are promised a certain level of rights and security. But today the Reagan regime is trampling on these promises, smashing illusions and opening the eyes of tens of millions.

The Reagan offensive poses a serious challenge to the workers and oppressed. This challenge must be met by a stern and uncompromising struggle. Each and every Reaganite outrage must be used to mobilize the masses for struggle. To meet the Reaganite offensive will require a bitter struggle of class against class, a fierce battle of the exploited and oppressed against the capitalist exploiters and oppressors.

[Photo: Holding high the banner of struggle against Reagan and the capitalist offensive -- the MLP at the march on Washington on August 27,1983, which brought out 250,000 people in protest against Reagan.]

C. The Fraud of the Democratic Party 'Opposition'

The Democratic Party poses no alternative to Reaganism and the Republicans. It is simply the other big party of the monopoly capitalist offensive against the working people.

Since Reagan came to office, we have seen the Democrats in Congress "honeymoon" with Reagan and rubber-stamp the slashing of social programs, the towering military buildup, and the entire Reagan program. Over the past year the Democrats have taken on more of the posture of being in the "opposition"; but all that this "opposition" has amounted to is their search for a bipartisan agreement with Reagan and the Republicans on every front.

Indeed, along with the big bourgeoisie as a whole, the Democratic Party is enthralled with Reaganism. Even its rhetoric has been adapted to Reaganism. This is the significance of the talk about the death of the "old liberalism" and the emergence of "neo-liberalism." Ever since the 1930's, the Democratic Party has advertised itself as the "party of labor and the minorities," as a party of "full employment" and civil rights. Despite such liberal-labor signboards to deceive the working masses, the Democrats have carried out the same reactionary capitalist program as pursued by the Republican Party of "big business." Now many Democratic politicians are tossing aside the old demagogy about social reforms in favor of the "new liberalism" or "neo-liberalism." But there is nothing "new" about it -- it is nothing more than the liberals' version of Reaganism and barefaced capitalist reaction.

At the same time, the liberal-labor politics of the Democratic Party remains a key weapon in the arsenal of capitalist reaction. The bourgeoisie wants to smother the smoldering fires of mass struggle against the Reagan offensive under the wet blanket of the Democratic Party.

To reconcile the workers and oppressed to Reaganism we see the Democratic politicians painting up every Reaganite measure in the guise of "reforms." While Reagan wants more handouts to the corporations, the Democrats endorse the same handouts in the name of "social investment" and "jobs." Or take the plans afoot in Congress for a draconic revision of the federal criminal code, the descendant of the notorious S-l Bill, aimed at cracking down on strikers, demonstrators and political activists. Here the Reagan regime has picked up a pet project of Kennedy and the Democrats who helped draft this police-state measure in the name of an allegedly progressive "reform." And there are countless other examples of such Reaganite "bipartisanship" all along the line.

While the Democratic Party politicians stand in full agreement with Reaganism on every essential point of capitalist policy, for mass consumption the charade of the Democratic "opposition" is being played out in full. The purpose of this charade is to create expectations about the shadowboxing in Congress and to tie the mass struggles against Reaganism to the Democrats' electoral campaigns. Here the labor bureaucrats, and the misleaders of the black people and of the other oppressed nationalities, as well as the social-democrats, revisionists, and other reformist forces, are all playing a key role in tying the working masses to the coattails of the Democratic Party.

We must look at how the social-democratic forces are serving the bourgeoisie. The workers and oppressed harbor a deep distrust for the parties of the rich and they are searching for an independent path of struggle. To deal with this, the bourgeoisie is relying heavily on social-democracy to keep the masses under bourgeois influence, to wipe out any spirit of revolutionary class struggle, and to ensure that any independence from the capitalist parties remains only in form and not in substance. The social-democrats are doing everything they can to whitewash the crimes of the Democratic Party and to dress it up as a progressive or even a nearly "socialist" alternative to Reaganism. They are also trying to paint up the reactionary union bureaucrats and other corrupt pillars of the Democratic Party with a pale "left" tinge. And the social-democrats are applying their influence on the mass movements, striving to steer the struggle into safe channels and especially into the arms of the Democratic Party and the labor bureaucrats.

Liberal-labor and social-democratic politics is a major barrier that the capitalists have thrown up against the development of the mass revolutionary struggle. It is the bourgeoisie's roadblock to the political independence of the working class and to the formation of the working class as a class for itself. It is the politics of attaching the workers as the tail to their own worst enemies; of class collaboration with the capitalist exploiters; and of reformist cringing and begging for crumbs from the imperialists.

Liberal-labor politics stems from the alliance between a soldout stratum of the workers and of the oppressed nationalities with the monopoly capitalist rulers. This stratum is in the main drawn from the labor aristocracy and the petty bourgeoisie, and it includes the labor bureaucrats and a host of petty government functionaries. This stratum strives to preserve its privileged positions and to grow fat off the profits of imperialism by taking the side of its own monopoly capitalist rulers against the majority of the workers and downtrodden here in the U.S. and against the oppressed victims of U.S. imperialist plunder abroad.

The Second Congress of the MLP holds that the pressing fight against Reaganite reaction also demands a hard fight against its principal political accomplice -- the Democratic Party. The political and ideological struggle against liberal-labor and social-democratic politics, the instrument of compromise with the capitalist offensive, stands as a burning task of all Marxist-Leninists, class conscious workers and revolutionary activists.

[Photo: In struggle against the Democratic and Republican Parties of the capitalists during the 1980 national elections -- the MLP organized an Anti-Imperialist Contingent in the demonstration against the Democratic National Convention in New York City, August 10,1980.]

D. Build the Independent Movement of the Working Class

Among the working masses we can see that there is a deep concern about the situation, that there is a burning hatred for the Reagan regime and the capitalist oppressors, and that a broad ferment is at work everywhere. This is reflected in the marches against Reagan; in the protests of the unemployed; in the strikes against the employers' concessions drive; in the outbursts of revolt against racist terror; and in the demonstrations and other mass actions against U.S. aggression in Central America and the Middle East and against the nuclear arms buildup. These are all signs that the exploited and oppressed are searching for the path of mass struggle against the capitalist offensive.

At the same time we see that, despite the very severe situation confronting the working people, the mass movements have yet to rise to the level of the stormy revolutionary clashes of the 1960's. Instead a great tension prevails as the masses have not yet turned to committed action. One source of this tentative situation, of the hesitant and faltering character of the present mass struggle, is that the workers have been struck hard blows with the onset of the economic depression and the first rounds of the Reaganite assault. But this factor alone cannot explain why, considering the naked brutality of the capitalist reaction and the deep indignation that it has provoked among the working people, the mass struggles have not reached a much higher level. The explanation for this rests primarily with the trade union bureaucrats, the social-democrats, and the other soldout misleaders of the workers and oppressed. These misleaders, who for the time being control the principal positions in the leadership of the mass movements, are doing everything in their power to keep a tight lid on the struggle. They may speak in the name of the workers, the black people, or the anti-war movement; but in their deeds their loyalties are first and foremost to the Democratic Party and to the course of collaboration with Reaganism and the capitalist exploiters.

However, this treacherous collaboration cannot be forced on the working people for too long. As all the class antagonisms in society continue to sharpen, this collaboration is bound to crack under the strain, unleashing a new wave of revolutionary upheaval.

The key to the success of this coming upsurge is that the working class must take its place in the center of the struggle. The working class is the truly revolutionary class which can bar the door to Reaganite reaction. Because of its revolutionary dynamism and stamina, its capacity for organization, its position at the heart of large-scale socialized production, and its numbers, the working class is the oppressed class with the greatest potential strength in the class struggle. The working class must stand forward to play its historic role as the champion of all the exploited and oppressed. It must place a mighty proletarian stamp on all the struggles of the masses against exploitation, reaction and war. The degree to which the working class succeeds in this is what will determine whether or not the struggle has the power to defeat the bourgeois offensive. Likewise, this is what will determine whether the fruits of the mass struggles are frittered away, or they serve to build up the forces of a powerful proletarian revolutionary movement for the final emancipation of the working masses from all capitalist exploitation and oppression.

For the working class to take its rightful place in the struggle, the first requirement is that it be organized as an independent political force, as a class with its own independent class aims. The proletariat must become a class for itself. This is a fundamental Marxist principle of the revolutionary working class movement.

Today the American working class finds itself chained to bourgeois politics. For decades the liberal-labor politicians, the labor bureaucrats, the social-democrats, and the revisionists have kept the workers tied to the coattails of the capitalist politicians. Presently we can see how this liberal- labor system of class collaboration is like handcuffs on the working people in the face of the Reaganite attacks. Breaking the grip of the capitalist parties is a most pressing task of the fight against the capitalist offensive.

In this situation, building the independent political movement of the working class is a tactical appeal as well as a general principle. It is an appeal to the class conscious workers and political activists to work in the direction of separating the masses -- ideologically, politically and organizationally -- from the capitalist parties and bourgeois politics. To build the independent political movement of the working class demands concrete revolutionary work.

First, it requires carrying forward the strikes, demonstrations, and other mass actions against the bourgeoisie. Without opening up the path of class struggle there can be no talk of political independence. The economic struggles of the workers have great importance as levers to organize the class struggle. But the working class cannot confine itself to the economic struggle. It must go forward and take its place in the center of the political struggles -- from the demonstrations against imperialist war to the fight against racist attacks. It must work to strengthen and to place its proletarian class stamp on every current of opposition to capitalist exploitation and oppression.

Second, it requires forging revolutionary organization among the workers, the youth, and all the exploited and oppressed, in the factories and trade unions, in the communities and schools, so as to carry forward the struggle. Special attention must be paid to supporting and building the workers' genuine communist party, the Marxist-Leninist Party, which is the highest form of class organization of the proletariat. The independent organization of the masses is essential to strengthen the class struggle and to build political independence.

And third, it requires class consciousness, it requires the workers becoming conscious of their own class interests. This demands a firm ideological and political struggle to expose the crimes of Reaganism, capitalism and imperialism, and to unmask the Democratic Party fakers, the union bureaucrats and the other liberal-labor and opportunist lackeys of the bourgeoisie. This demands the widest possible distribution of revolutionary literature to spread the truth about the situation facing the working people, to clarify who are their real allies and who are their false friends, and to chart the path forward for the mass struggle. Special attention must be paid to the popularization and study of Marxism-Leninism, which is the only reliable compass and scientific theory of the revolutionary working class movement. The class conscious workers and revolutionary activists of today must keep to Lenin's famous watchword that "without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement."

In short, the appeal to build the independent political movement of the working class is an appeal to action to strengthen the struggle against the capitalist offensive today and to prepare for success in the revolutionary upheavals tomorrow.

[Photo: Taking into the streets the call to build the independent political movement of the working class -- the MLP's march through downtown Buffalo on the occasion of International Workers' Day, 1981.]

E. The Socialist Revolution, Goal of the Class Struggle

The revolutionary class struggle is the only weapon in the hands of the working people against the capitalist onslaught. But this struggle is not simply part of an unending tug of war without perspective. On the contrary. The class struggle is the moving force of the earth-shaking historical process leading to the socialist revolution. Socialism is the goal of the working class struggle.

It is the socialist revolution that can emancipate the working class from the exploitation and tyranny of wage slavery. For the working people this is the only way out of the growing misery and oppression of monopoly capitalist rule.

The socialist revolution alone can emancipate the working class from wage slavery. As long as the profit system prevails, the workers will suffer the scourge of economic crisis, the pain of backbreaking exploitation and the agonies of unemployment. These and all the other permanent wounds of capitalism cannot be patched up with minor repairs or class collaborationist schemes for harmony between worker and capitalist slave driver. The continual resistance struggle of the working class can at most moderate the horrors of the capitalist hell or check the capitalists' drive to reduce the workers to poverty-stricken wretches. But to break the vicious cycle of capitalist misery altogether demands the final overthrow of wage slavery.

Today the enormous productive forces of society are subordinated to the profit interests of the banks, corporations and the other capitalist owners. This is what has amassed fabulous wealth for a handful at one pole; and this is what has amassed untold misery and hardship for the workers at the other pole. By expropriating capitalist property and placing production in the service of the material and cultural needs of the working masses, the socialist revolution will abolish the capitalist plagues of economic crisis, overwork, unemployment, insecurity and hunger once and for all.

The threatening clouds of capitalist reaction and growing fascism can only be lifted by socialist revolution. V.I. Lenin stressed that a specific political feature of imperialism is "reaction all along the line." Indeed the people of El Salvador, or Chile, or South Africa, or the Philippines know all too well that U.S. imperialism is a bulwark of fascism on a world scale. At home, too, the U.S. big bourgeoisie is strengthening the dead hand of reaction against the working people; step by step it is carrying out the fascization of the state and society. The working class and people must resolutely combat every reactionary measure and step of fascization. This is a great rallying point for the mass revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie. But there can be no lasting victory in the struggle against reaction and growing fascism short of rooting out the source of these evils, short of the overthrow of monopoly capital.

The proletarian revolution will abolish the bourgeoisie's reactionary apparatus of oppression -- with its bloated military, arrogant police and overgrown bureaucracy -- that weighs down like a ton of bricks on the working people, and replace it with the armed people themselves. It will usher in the epoch of proletarian democracy where the working people will for the first time enjoy genuine freedom and democracy as the real masters of the new society.

The socialist revolution alone will bring about the complete liberation of the black people, the Mexican nationality people, the Native people, and all the other victims of racial and national oppression. It is the bourgeoisie and its state apparatus which organizes systematic and brutal discrimination and terror against the black people and the other oppressed nationalities. It is the capitalist bloodsuckers which gain handsome profits from their ugly divide-and-rule tactics against the workers. Every real step forward in the struggle against the special oppression of the black people and the other oppressed peoples strengthens the hand of all the exploited and oppressed against the exploiters and oppressors. The liberation struggle against racial and national oppression is an important lever of the proletarian revolution. At the same time, it is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, a class which is racist and chauvinist to the core, that will bring about full equality and complete liberation. This is what will consolidate the iron bonds of class solidarity among the workers of all races and nationalities in the struggle to build a new society free of racism, chauvinism or oppression of any type.

The socialist revolution will put an end to imperialist war and aggression. Imperialism means unbridled militarism and enslaving wars. U.S. imperialism is no exception. It is a monstrous superpower, a world exploiter, a nuclear blackmailer and bully, a bloodstained international aggressor. Driven by their insatiable thirst for profits, the U.S. capitalist moneybags are engaged in frenzied arming and are subjecting the entire world to their schemes for world domination and to the threat of nuclear war. The working and progressive people in the U.S. are the cannon fodder for this war drive and they have repeatedly launched mass struggles in opposition to the U.S. imperialist warmakers and their imperialist adventures to subjugate other peoples. The anti-militarist and anti-imperialist struggles are a powerful force for the development of the revolutionary movement against monopoly capitalist rule. At the same time, only the overthrow of the capitalist exploiters can put a stop to the warmongering crimes of U.S. imperialism. And only the triumph of the world proletarian socialist revolution can make possible a just and lasting peace.

The victory of the socialist revolution of the future demands systematic revolutionary work in the present. As the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels proclaimed: "The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement."

The class conscious workers and revolutionaries must strive in the struggles of today to muster the powerful forces of the socialist revolution of tomorrow. They must make good use of the day-to-day conflicts against the capitalist offensive to build up the socialist consciousness and the revolutionary organization of the masses. In the thick of the mass struggle they must build up the class organization of the proletariat independent of the bourgeoisie.

Much work is needed to popularize the socialist goal; this is essential to strengthen the mass struggles, to lift the struggles out of the capitalist and reformist framework, and to shed light on where the struggle is headed. Through these and other means, the class conscious vanguard must work towards merging all the diverse streams of revolt and struggle among the exploited and oppressed into a single torrent of socialist revolution.

The working class is at once the leader and main force of the socialist revolution. Its position of wage slavery makes it the only class with nothing to lose but its chains, the class most consistently antagonistic to all forms of exploitation and oppression. It is the only class capable of the revolutionary consciousness, stamina, discipline and organization demanded by the tortuous and earthshaking struggle for the overthrow of bourgeois rule. The core of the working class is the industrial proletariat, which is forged into an especially powerful force by the socialized character of large- scale industrial production. The working class is the gravedigger of capitalism and the builder of the new socialist society.

To accomplish its historic mission the proletariat must liberate all the exploited and downtrodden who suffer under the plunder and tyranny of capitalist rule. It must rally to its banner the other working and exploited masses. Besides the working class this includes other working people such as the lower technical employees, teachers and other lower sections of the professionals; small owners who mainly do not live off of the exploitation of the labor of others; and the broad sections of the poor and destitute who live on the periphery of the working class. Among the agricultural population, it is the farm laborers who stand closest to the non-agricultural working class. The proletariat of town and country gathers around itself both the semi-proletarian poor farmers, i.e., those who have to supplement their meager farming income by hiring themselves out as wage laborers, as well as those small farmers who in the main do not live off the labor of others. In both town and country the working class may be able to neutralize additional intermediate strata in the course of revolutionary struggle.

The working class must strive to win over the vast majority of the working people who all stand to gain from the socialist revolution. Combined, the proletariat and the other working masses make up the overwhelming majority of the American population. The proletariat builds its alliance with non-proletarian strata by leading them in struggle against capital and without losing sight of the class nature of the other strata. The petty bourgeoisie, for example, vacillates between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie; even when it is dissatisfied it is marked by a tendency towards faith in and accommodation with the capitalist system. The proletariat must expose these petty-bourgeois illusions as one part of its work to win over the petty-bourgeois sections to the side of the socialist revolution. As well, the proletariat must consistently oppose all attempts by the petty bourgeoisie to infect the working class movement with petty- bourgeois ideological influences of various kinds.

The socialist revolution is accomplished by the revolutionary action of the masses and it represents the most radical overthrow of the existing social order. It is not achieved through a reshuffling of parliamentary seats and it is not a mere change of signboard over the oppressive bourgeois governmental apparatus. The socialist revolution will smash the present bourgeois state machine, which is nothing but the disguised dictatorship of the rich capitalists over the working people. On its ashes the new state power of the working class will be erected. This new power will be the organization of the working class as the ruling class, the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the one hand, this will mean vigilant suppression of the overthrown exploiters and the counter-revolution, and a whole period of class struggles against the remnants of the old bourgeois world. And, on the other hand, this will mean the broadest democracy for the vast majority, bringing them into active participation in all levels of state administration and political, economic and social life, and raising the common working men and women to be the real masters of society.

The socialist revolution will expropriate the capitalist exploiters. Through the combined effects of the proletarian political power, workers' control of production, and the confiscation of the big monopolies, the banks, and other key enterprises, the backbone of capitalist slavery will be broken and the socialist reorganization of society begun. From there the socialist revolution will proceed step by step to eliminate all capitalist ownership of the means of production. Thus the capitalist parasites will no longer grow fat off the labor of others and the producers will enjoy the fruits of their labor. Exploitation of man by man will be abolished and the ground will be prepared for realizing the ultimate aim of classless society -- communism.

[Photo: Holding aloft the standard of the socialist revolution -- the MLP's meeting in Buffalo, N.Y., on November 6, 1982, to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution of the Bolsheviks in 1917.]

F. The Economic Crisis, Capitalism in Decay

The capitalist economy in the U.S. remains locked in the iron jaws of crisis. The ongoing economic depression is the most severe and prolonged crisis since the depression of the 1930's.

The crisis lays bare the hostile conflict of interests between labor and capital. It reveals the destructive power of the fundamental antagonism between the social character of labor and the private capitalist character of appropriation. It is a crisis of overproduction that is exposing the cruel insanity of a system that condemns tens of millions to the unemployment lines and to go without the necessities of life because the working class has produced too many goods for the capitalist markets to absorb. The crisis once again confirms that today, in the 1980's, the insurmountable contradictions of the capitalist system, which Marx revealed in his time, continue to operate in full force.

The crisis in the U.S. is part of a truly world crisis. It has gripped the whole capitalist world, including the bourgeois-revisionist countries (the Soviet Union, Poland, Cuba, Yugoslavia, China, etc.). Only Albania, where the working class and people are building genuine socialism, has escaped the destructive blows of the crisis.

The American bourgeoisie is striving with might and main to shift the burden of the crisis onto the shoulders of the working masses. The capitalist exploiters hope to restore their profit margins at the expense of the workers. Towards this aim they are saddling the working masses with a series of crisis measures.

* ''Reindustrialization.''This is the banner of monopoly capital's drive to squeeze more sweat and blood out of the workers. Under this signboard industry is being rationalized, operations streamlined, and older and less profitable plants shut down. In steel, railroad and other industries, monopolies are being merged, while record numbers of small and medium enterprises are being driven under. And assembly lines are being modernized and equipped with computers and robots.

The workers are bearing the brunt of this "reindustrialization," both through loss of jobs, and through man- eating productivity drives. They are being saddled with backbreaking speedup, long hours of overtime, job combinations, and the scrapping of even minimal safety and health measures.

* Wage cuts. A major part of "reindustrialization" is the capitalists' concessions drive to slash wages, cut benefits and wipe out work rule protections for the workers. In industries from meatpacking to the airlines, the employers have unleashed ruthless strikebreaking and union busting to cut wages by as much as one-half. As well, the capitalists are making more and more use of special low pay categories of workers, such as part-timers who receive low wages and no benefits.

* Job Elimination. With the onset of the economic crisis, the capitalists have thrown millions of workers into the unemployment lines. As well, capitalist "reindustrialization" has permanently eliminated millions of jobs in auto, steel, rubber and other industries. The terrible specter of unemployment is being seized on by the employers as their most potent weapon in cutting wages and driving the workers like slaves.

* Militarization. The U.S. imperialists' war preparations are a capitalist bonanza. The trillion-dollar arms buildup is providing the corporate merchants of war countless billions of secure and high profits.

* Plunder of the treasury. Other means of plunder of the federal treasury have also grown enormously in recent years. The war buildup and the huge tax breaks for the corporations and millionaires have produced ballooning deficits. The interest payments alone on the national debt to the Wall Street bankers have grown to a whopping $100 billion a year. This tribute to the kings of finance has become one of the three largest items in the federal budget and is itself a source of the astronomical deficits.

* High taxes, inflation and interest rates. To pay for this plunder by the war speculators and bankers the working people are being skinned three times over. They are being skinned once by the ever more crushing tax burden. They are being skinned a second time by the inflation and high interest rates that are being generated by the $200 billion deficits. And they are being skinned once again by the budget cuts in social programs.

* Squeezing the toilers abroad. As the world exploiters that they are, the U.S. monopolies are also saddling the workers and peasants of the oppressed nations of Latin America, Asia and Africa with the burden of their economic crisis. The multinational corporations are using the crisis to drive down the prices of imported raw materials from these countries, while they boost the prices of their industrial exports. The Wall Street financiers are also turning the screws of financial plunder. Over the last decade the export of loan capital from U.S. banks to the dependent countries has multiplied ten times over. Now these financial sharks are claiming their pound of flesh. They are extracting tens of billions in interest out of the hides of the starving workers and peasants of Mexico, Brazil and dozens of other countries.

Over the last decade and more, through these crisis measures at home and abroad the American capitalists have registered periods of high profits and revivals of the stock market. They have, also created very short-lived and partial upswings in production. But such "recoveries" are only ripples in the downward spiral that has gripped the economy.

Meanwhile, for the working people there has not even been temporary or partial recoveries from the agonies of economic depression. The degree of mass suffering can be best measured by the size of the multimillion army of the unemployed. The government itself admits that there are some ten million unemployed, and the real figure is closer to 15 million, with millions more in part-time and temporary work. Even the Reaganite economists forecast only a relatively minor ebb in the sky-high unemployment rate by the end of the decade. What's more, the plight of the jobless grows ever more desperate as benefits have been slashed and as the time that millions of workers go without a paycheck has stretched from months to years.

All of the capitalists' crisis measures are paving the way for ever more severe crisis. At home, as industry is further rationalized to boost production with ever smaller workforces, the crisis of markets will become that much deeper and the crisis of overproduction will grow that much more acute. All the crisis measures lead towards intensifying the revolt of the working masses. And abroad, the stepped-up plunder of the oppressed nations has produced the makings of a world financial debacle and has stimulated the revolutionary struggles of the workers and toilers. The monopoly capitalist system is caught in the quagmire of stagnation and crisis; it is sinking towards ever more destructive economic shocks.

[Photo: An MLP banner at the September 19,1981 Solidarity Day demonstration in Washington, D.C., where 400,000 workers protested against unemployment and the reactionary policies of the Reagan regime.]

G. Against the Capitalist Cultural Offensive

Just as the capitalist crisis and the bourgeois offensive is taking place on the fronts of politics and economics, so too it is manifested in every other sphere of social life. Culture is no exception. In fact, the working people are being besieged by an offensive of cultural impoverishment and cultural reaction.

Education is more and more becoming the private preserve for the sons and daughters of the wealthy few. For the rest there are cutbacks, deteriorating schools, prohibitive college tuitions, and a spreading plague of semi-illiteracy. At the same time, the Reaganites and the capitalists are on a drive to make the content of education even more reactionary -- saturated with racist, religious and militarist themes.

Nowhere is the bourgeois cultural poverty and reaction more glaring than the television, movies, music and other mass cultural forms. This is simply an imperialist culture to laud the parasitism of millionaires, and to glorify gangsterism, racist bigotry, brutality against women, mercenary adventures, military aggression and the police jackboot.

With the help of such well-funded outfits as the "Moral Majority," the Reagan government and the bourgeoisie are unleashing an ultra-reactionary ideological crusade. This is a crusade of flag-waving patriotism; of worshipping imperialist war and the nuclear arsenals; of jingoistic hatred for the peoples of other countries; of segregationist hatred for the black people and the other oppressed nationalities in the U.S.; of law and order hysteria against the working people; and of religious obscurantism and intolerance.

Out of the one side of its mouth, the degenerate bourgeoisie spews its "Moral Majority''-type hypocrisy to justify more prisons and more repression against the working masses. And out of the other side it is spewing an unprecedented wave of spiritual and cultural decadence. It has turned drug taking, pornography and prostitution into multi-billion dollar businesses, and it has done the same with every other means of poisoning the minds of the people.

The brunt of this cultural assault is being borne by the working class youth. The capitalist system has shut the door to any future for the young people save a minimum wage dead-end job, or a place on the unemployment lines, or on the firing lines in imperialist wars. That is why the bourgeoisie is making special efforts to pacify them with their cultural poison and to turn the rebellious youth down dead-end roads and into the prisons.

The struggle for education, for enlightenment, and against cultural reaction is part of the working class struggle against the bourgeois offensive. This is important for bringing the youth into the struggle for a better world, into militant revolt against the capitalist oppressors.

[Photo: Carrying out anti-imperialist agitation with revolutionary songs -- the MLP at a demonstration in Boston against U.S. intervention in El Salvador, March 21,1981.]

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II. REVOLUTIONARY WORK IN THE MASS MOVEMENTS

A. Introduction: The MLP, the Party of Revolutionary Action

The exploitation and oppression in capitalist society gives rise to political and social movements of the working masses. These protests and mass storms are a concrete reflection of the class struggle. They bring to light the inner contradictions of capitalist rule. They are a sign of the deep oppression the masses face and of their undying desire to fight for a better social system.

There is always discontent among the masses against the crimes and outrages of the exploiters. But the mass movements do not follow a straight-line path of development. The class struggle has its ebbs and flows. Nevertheless, it is the revolutionary class struggle that is the real driving force of history. It is the revolutionary energy of the masses that is the powerful battering ram that can knock down the apparently ironclad political realities of the day. And the socialist revolution itself only takes place at a time of maximum activity of the working masses, at a time when the energy and initiative of the masses reaches levels thousands of times greater than anything seen in times of "exploitation as usual."

The 1960's and early 1970's was a time of mass upsurge in the U.S. It offers a vivid example of the significance and strength of the mass movement in contemporary America. The struggle against the U.S. imperialist war of aggression in Viet Nam, the black people's movement against racist oppression, and other struggles shook the country. Large sections of the masses woke to political life and became radicalized. Mass disaffection arose with the capitalist parties, including the Democratic Party. But this period of struggle also had its conspicuous weaknesses and limitations. Solid revolutionary organization was not firmly established among the masses, and there were still many illusions in the Democratic Party and capitalist reformism.

The direct roots of the Marxist-Leninist Party stretch back into the mass upsurge of the 1960's. At that time many activists came forward to reach revolutionary conclusions. The advanced section of the activists became disgusted at the treacheries of the reformists and revisionists and saw the need to take up revolutionary Marxism-Leninism. The comrades who set the course towards the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party came right from the midst of the stormy mass movements of that time: they had thrown themselves heart and soul into the youth and student movement, into the anti-racist movement, into the GI and draft resistance movement, into the workers' movement, into the women's movement, and into all the big struggles of the time. In 1969 they founded the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) as a nationwide Marxist-Leninist center and began the decade-long struggle to reconstitute a genuinely communist party in the U.S., the struggle that led to the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party.

From that time to this day, our Party has never lost its character as a party of revolutionary struggle, a party that is built up in the flames of the class struggle. While today the reformists, liquidators and other opportunists are doing their best to spit on the memory of the 1960's, to renounce the mass upsurge, to denounce the revolutionary class struggle and replace it with tame electoral work on the fringes of the bloodstained Democratic Party, it is the Marxist-Leninist Party that has remained true to the best traditions of the mass upsurge of the 1960's and early 1970's, the traditions of mass struggle, of ardent adherence to principles and of striving for the revolution.

The Marxist-Leninist Party is a Leninist proletarian party of the new, communist type. It is not a loose federation or a talk shop, but the party of revolutionary action. It builds organization in indissoluble connection with the mass struggle. It represents the unity of .Marxist-Leninist consciousness with the mass movement. It guides, organizes and spurs forward the class struggle.

But the Marxist-Leninist Party does not have a tailist attitude to the mass movements. It does not bow down to the dictates of spontaneity and fashion. Instead it works hard to orient the mass movements so that their energy will not be frittered away uselessly, but will serve to buildup the revolutionary movement. This requires steadfast revolutionary work in the thick of the mass movements. It requires that the theory of Marxism-Leninism be applied to the concrete conditions of struggle in order to illuminate the necessary strategy and tactics. It requires constant attention to building up revolutionary organization and yet more revolutionary organization. And it requires the utmost dedication by the communist vanguard to the interests of the working masses and of the proletarian revolution.

A central part of the work of the Marxist-Leninist Party in the mass movements is the work to sever the masses from the influence of the reformist and liberal-labor flunkeys of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is equally a capitalist, imperialist and racist party as the Republican Party, but it has its own special role. The Democratic Party is the main party for deceiving the working masses and convincing them that capitalism can solve their problems. The "left" wing of the Democratic Party has the particular task of subordinating the mass movements to the confines of capitalist politics, of toning down the mass movements and eliminating their militant and oppositional character.

As the class struggle sharpens, so does the revolt of the masses against liberal and reformist sabotage and treachery. The Marxist-Leninist Party encourages this revolt. This is the only way to guide the mass movement onto the broad road of struggle against the capitalist class. This is the only way to build a truly independent movement of the working class, a movement that expresses the revolutionary aspirations of all working people to emancipate themselves and build a new society.

Today the level of the mass struggle is nowhere near what it was during the high tide of the latter 1960's and early 1970's. The mass upsurge is not yet here. But there is widescale mass ferment. There are strikes, demonstrations and protests. There is the communist vanguard persistently building up proletarian organization. There is a profound anger and outrage building up among the oppressed. All the conditions are maturing for sharp class conflicts between the arrogant capitalists and the indignant working masses. How long before the storm breaks no one can tell. But the times cry out for steadfast revolutionary work in the heart of the working masses. This is the answer to the capitalist offensive and the dangers it holds for all working people; this is what is needed in preparation for the big battles ahead.

B. The Workers' Movement

(i) On the economic struggle

Life in capitalist society is filled with constant battles between the workers and the exploiters. The workers can be found voicing their demands, attempting to organize into unions, and carrying out strikes and pickets. The economic struggle is an inevitable feature of capitalism.

In capitalist society, the profits of the employers are sweated out of the workers. In their ruthless drive for profits, the capitalists seek to saddle the workers with the lowest wages, bad working conditions and the least benefits, and to squeeze the greatest amount of work from them. The workers are forced to defend themselves from the constant encroachments of capital if they are not to allow themselves to be reduced to the level of paupers. By uniting with their fellow workers in common struggle, the workers overcome their powerlessness as individual wage earners.

In times of economic crisis, such as today, the capitalists intensify their attempts to defend their profits at the expense of the workers. In the conditions of the current depression, the capitalists are carrying out a vicious offensive to shift the burden of the crisis onto the shoulders of the working class and all the laboring and poor masses.

Today the ruination caused by the economic crisis lends special importance to developing the economic struggle of the working class. The workers are angry. Here and there bitter fights have broken out against the employers. Big clashes on the economic front are in the making. The Marxist-Leninist Party encourages this resistance by the workers and stands for developing the ferment among the workers into a powerful class-wide struggle against the starvation drive of the capitalists.

The Fight Against the Capitalist Offensive on the Economic Front

The capitalist offensive aims at forcing down the working and living conditions of the workers and at smashing the ability of the workers to fight back.

Unemployment is a permanent evil of capitalism. In the current crisis it has grown to huge proportions. Massive layoffs and plant shutdowns have left nearly 15 million in the ranks of the unemployed. Many ran out of any unemployment benefits long ago and have been forced into severe poverty. The ranks of the homeless are on the rise. The capitalists have nothing to offer the vast millions of unemployed except a continued place in the unemployment statistics.

Unemployment is a terrible curse upon the whole working class. It hits hard not only at the jobless but also at those still on the job. The capitalists use mass unemployment as a big club to force down the wages and working conditions of the employed.

The employers are saddling the workers everywhere with "takeback" or "concessions" contracts, wiping out the gains that workers had made through years of hard struggle. Beginning on a large scale with Chrysler in 1979, concessions have been imposed in industry after industry. Concessions involve hourly wages, overtime, working conditions and safety, the pace of work, job security, pensions, medical insurance, and so forth. The capitalists have declared their intention of cutting the workers' wages by half. Already many workers have had this forced on them. Millions more have been forced into part-time jobs with rock-bottom hourly rates and no benefits at all. Meanwhile millions of other workers are forced to slave to exhaustion well beyond the allegedly standard 40-hour week.

The concessions drive has been accompanied by the refrain that "this will save jobs." But this has been repeatedly exposed as a big lie. In fact, the money robbed from the workers has gone into capitalist high living, corporate mergers and the "reindustrialization" drive of the bourgeoisie. "Reindustrialization" has meant robotization, automation and ruthless productivity drives, which have resulted in even more workers being cast onto the unemployment lines. The factories are being turned into hellholes of speedup and overwork and new schemes of labor discipline are being imposed.

In the face of the economic crisis, the federal, state and local governments, headed by the Reagan administration in Washington, are also feverishly working to drive the working masses into destitution. The social benefit programs, meager as they were, which the masses had won through struggles in the past, are being slashed right and left. The unemployed, working mothers, the elderly and the poor all face ever greater insecurity and misery. Health, safety and environmental regulations are being scrapped on a wide scale. Over decades, the tax burdens on the workers have been increased step by step while the taxes on the rich are being eliminated.

Not only do the employers and the government slash the living standards of the workers, but they are also joining together in an all-out drive to smash the ability of the workers to fight back. The Reagan administration itself has led the way in massive strikebreaking efforts. In the fall of 1981, Reagan fired 10,000 striking air traffic controllers. This was a signal to employers and the authorities across the country to unleash the most draconian measures against striking workers. The employers are coming up with newer and more sophisticated methods of union busting and strikebreaking, such as corporate name-changing and the use of the bankruptcy laws to rip up contracts. Meanwhile, the forces of the government -- court injunctions, the police and National Guard -- are all being thrown up against the workers.

The capitalist assault on the working masses is being directly assisted by the trade union bureaucrats. In the face of the economic crisis, the labor hacks have refused to lift a finger to organize the workers' resistance. Instead they have sung hymns to the glories of capitalist "reindustrialization" and labor-management cooperation. They have continued their tradition of striving to squelch militant mass actions and of helping the employers ferret out progressive workers. They have brought the art of corruption to perfection with their eyes fixed on shady deals with union funds and on cozy arrangements with the employers. Their idea of fighting union-busting is to "save" the union by giving in to every demand of the employers.

The union bureaucrats have worked hand in hand with the employers to shove concessions down the workers' throats. They have avidly championed the productivity drive against the workers. They have been especially disdainful towards the unemployed. The trade union hacks have not only sabotaged any struggle against layoffs and plant closings, but they have also refused to organize any serious fight on behalf of the millions in the ranks of the unemployed.

Instead of targeting the capitalists for struggle, the trade union bureaucrats have launched scapegoating campaigns against immigrants and the workers of foreign countries. The purpose of such campaigns is to promote the poison of racism and chauvinism in order to disrupt the class solidarity of the workers.

While sabotaging every attempt by the workers to fight back against the employers, the labor bureaucrats have also been busy undermining the struggle against the offensive of the Reagan government. They refused to fight Reagan's strikebreaking against the air traffic controllers. And while making noise against Reagan's economic policies, they have simply sought to channel the workers' hatred of Reagan towards the Democratic Party, a monopoly capitalist party which is a loyal partner of the Reaganite capitalist offensive.

The labor bureaucrats also work hand in hand with the State Department and the CIA to disrupt the struggle of the workers and peasants in other countries. The AFL-CIO, for example, provides funds and cadre to wreck and split foreign trade unions and set up servile, reactionary trade unions and peasant organizations. At the same time, the AFL-CIO fights tooth and nail for big budgets for the Pentagon and for the most aggressive and warmongering policies. Even while telling the workers how "anti-Reagan" they are, the AFL-CIO bureaucrats work hand in glove with the most reactionary, union-busting and bloodthirsty Reaganites in implementing imperialist foreign policy.

How is this betrayal by the trade union leaders to be explained? The fact of the matter is that the bureaucrats who head up the American trade unions are not representatives of the workers. No, they function as agents of the capitalists within the workers' movement. As part of the aristocracy of labor, they enjoy privileged positions which separate them from the interests of the rank and file. Union presidents and other chief bureaucrats live high on the hog, getting notoriously high salaries rivalling those of top corporate management. The labor bureaucrats are opposed to a policy of class struggle in the trade unions. Instead they promote collaborationist accommodations with the employers. They undermine and sell out the struggles of the workers. In short, the labor bureaucrats are traitors who defend the interests of the capitalists.

But despite all the treachery of the bureaucrats, there is a burning anger among the workers against the capitalist offensive. The workers' ability to fight back has been undermined by various factors, especially the treachery of the bureaucrats and the disorganization caused by the layoffs, plant closings, and so forth. As a result, 1979-82 saw a low period in the strike movement. Nevertheless, even in the midst of all the adverse conditions, the discontent among the workers could be seen in a number of bitterly fought strikes, in growing opposition to concessions contracts, in the turnout of workers at anti-Reagan demonstrations and in the beginnings of a movement among the unemployed. This ferment among the workers is bound to break out into fierce struggle. The sabotage of the labor bureaucrats is bound to give rise to rebellion against them.

The experience of the workers' movement in the late 1960's and early 1970's offers a recent example of upsurge among the working class. During that period, wildcat strikes broke out on a wide scale against the capitalist offensive and the treachery of the labor bosses among, for example, the postal workers, truck drivers, coal miners, autoworkers, etc. In union-sanctioned strikes, too, workers did not leave things in the hands of the bureaucrats but took action on their own, such as during the electrical strike of 1969, the farm workers' struggles, etc. The rebellion of the workers also led to widespread attempts by the workers to organize independently of the union bureaucrats. This upsurge subsided by the late 1970's. Nevertheless these struggles remain important reservoirs of experience for the struggles that lie ahead.

Today the capitalist exploiters have thrown down a challenge to the working masses: fight or starve. The Marxist- Leninist Party stands for a fighting policy, a policy of class struggle. In the conditions of the current economic crisis, a number of fronts have been brought to the fore in the ongoing economic struggle of the proletariat. Among these are the following:

The Fight Against Unemployment. The Marxist- Leninist Party holds that the fight against unemployment is an important front of the class struggle. It supports the actions of the unemployed for jobs and relief from the miseries of unemployment. At the same time, the MLP holds that the fight in the defense of the unemployed is a fight of all workers, unemployed and employed alike. The MLP fights against layoffs and plant shutdowns. It fights for the unemployed to be provided with jobs or a livelihood.

The Fight Against Concessions and the "Reindustrialization" Drive. The Marxist-Leninist Party fights against the imposition of concessions on the workers. The workers cannot allow themselves to be driven into greater impoverishment through wage and benefit cuts. A relentless struggle must be built up against the ''reindustrialization" drive which adds to the ranks of the laid off while intensifying exploitation for the employed. The productivity drive must be resisted, including the speedup system and overtime.

The Fight Against Cutbacks in Social Benefits. The capitalist governments must not be allowed to get away with slashing the meager social benefit programs. The Marxist-Leninist Party opposes the cutbacks and moreover it fights for meeting the full needs of the workers, the unemployed, the elderly and all the poor. The MLP holds that social benefit programs must be funded through imposing heavy taxes on the rich exploiters. Relief for the poor must come from the profits of the capitalists and not by increasing the tax burden on the working people.

The Fight to Organize the Unorganized. The superior numbers of the working class count for nothing unless they are united by organization. Today the largest part of the workers, accounting for four-fifths or so, are not even organized into the most elementary form of proletarian organization, the trade unions. The union bureaucrats, while sabotaging the struggles of the unionized workers, refuse to lift a finger to help the unorganized and frequently disrupt organizing drives launched by the rank-and-file workers.

The MLP holds that, both in the struggle to organize the unorganized into unions and in the struggles of those who are already unionized, the militant workers must strive to unite themselves independently of the union bureaucrats so that they can combat the bureaucrats' treachery and advance their mass struggles against the capitalists.

Furthermore, to fight the capitalist offensive, the workers need, besides the unions, a variety of other organizations. First and foremost of these is the vanguard political party of the working class, which must develop strongholds in every work place and proletarian community. Thus the class conscious workers face the pressing task of organizing and yet more organizing. The Marxist-Leninist Party holds that the only way to fight against the capitalist offensive is through the class struggle. The capitalists will not yield an inch to the workers without struggle. Strikes, demonstrations and other mass actions are essential. While supporting every small skirmish by the workers, the MLP puts forward before the workers the need to close their ranks as a class, uniting both employed and unemployed, against the starvation policies of the exploiters.

Using the Economic Struggle to Build the Workers' Revolutionary Movement

The economic struggle is one of the major forms of the class struggle of the proletariat. It is an essential weapon in the hands of the workers to defend themselves from the attacks of capital. If the workers did not wage this struggle they would be reduced to the level of wretches.

The economic struggle provides the workers with an elementary training in the class struggle. It provides impulse towards the establishment of class organization. As well, it is particularly useful in arousing the least conscious sections among the workers.

The economic struggle alone, however, is not enough. It can only limit the exploitation by the capitalists. By itself it cannot do away with capitalist exploitation altogether. For that purpose, the working class has to carry out the socialist revolution and overthrow the bourgeoisie.

To prepare for the socialist revolution, the workers have to build their revolutionary movement. For this purpose, the workers have to fight not just on the economic front but on other fronts of the class struggle as well. The working class has to develop its independent movement against capital and the bourgeois state power on all questions. It has to fight racism and national oppression, imperialism and war, reaction and growing fascism. In this way, the workers build up a powerful revolutionary political movement.

The economic struggle has an important role to play in the development of the workers' revolutionary movement. A revolutionary policy towards the economic struggle means using it as one of the levers for building the forces of the revolutionary movement. Indeed, the economic struggle plays such a role even during the revolutionary period culminating in the uprising for the seizure of political power. Every revolutionary upsurge worldwide where the working class has played a prominent role has seen the workers' economic movement playing a significant role in the general revolutionary movement. This took place in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917. In recent years, this phenomenon can be seen in such events as the Portuguese revolution of 1974 which overthrew the fascist Caetano dictatorship, in the overthrow of the Shah in Iran in 1978-79, the overthrow of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua in 1978-79, etc.

The Marxist-Leninist Party supports the economic struggle of the workers as of vital necessity in defending their wages, jobs and working conditions. The Party links up with this movement, brings consciousness to it, and provides every assistance to the workers to make their struggles determined and strong. It works in the economic struggle in such a way that this struggle provides a lever to organize the revolutionary movement for socialism.

With respect to the economic struggle, the Marxist- Leninist Party assists the workers in getting the best results in any immediate fight. But the Party also believes that, whatever the fate of any particular struggle, the real fruits of the struggle must lie in the enhancement of the fighting capacity, consciousness and organization of the workers as1 a class.

The Marxist-Leninist Party helps to build the confidence of the workers in their own strength by orienting the economic struggle along the path of mass action. Actions such as strikes are powerful weapons in the hands of the workers to press their demands. It is mass action which can mobilize the rank-and-file workers to unleash their creative energies. In promoting mass action, the MLP strives to inculcate among the workers a militant spirit of sweeping aside all obstacles placed in the path of their struggle, whether it be from the employers, the capitalist government or the trade union bosses.

The Marxist-Leninist Party uses the experience of the economic struggle as one of the means to develop the class consciousness of the workers. Thus the Party uses agitation on the economic conflict to strengthen among the workers the awareness of the irreconcilable hostility of interests between labor and capital. The Party clarifies the workings of the capitalist profit system and illuminates the necessity and path of fighting for its overthrow. The MLP exposes the role of the government as a machine in the hands of the capitalists against the workers.

Furthermore, the MLP uses the experience of the economic struggle to expose the treacherous role of the trade union bureaucrats. The Party shows the workers their strikebreaking character in its complete hideousness. A worker who knows only the rotten role of the bureaucrats in sabotaging the immediate economic struggle still does not know the full story of their treachery. But the exposure of the scab character of the labor bureaucrats provides a powerful battering ram for knocking down the trust of the workers in these hidden agents of the capitalists. Such exposure is an essential part of any serious struggle against them.

The Marxist-Leninist Party also uses the economic struggle as one of the means to promote the organization of the workers. The economic struggle brings to the minds of the workers a sense of the need for organization. The Marxist-Leninist Party uses this sentiment, and the distrust of the workers in the bureaucrats, to encourage the workers to organize independently of the trade union bureaucracy.

(ii) The independent political movement

In order for the working class to effectively fight for its own class interests, the workers cannot restrict themselves to the economic struggle alone. They must above all build up their own independent political movement, a movement which is independent of and opposed to the politics of the capitalist class.

This does not just mean that the workers must fight on the political front for economic reforms. It means, above all, that the workers must take up political action which opposes capitalist politics on every question. The workers must fight the bourgeoisie on such questions as war, racism and imperialism. The development of the independent political movement of the working class is a crucial step on the road towards the socialist revolution.

Today it is an unfortunate state of affairs that the workers' movement is commonly regarded as synonymous with the economic movement of the workers. This is the result of decades of liberal-labor corruption by the trade union bureaucrats, liberal politicians and their opportunist hangers-on.

The labor bureaucrats are fearful of all aspects of the class struggle, but they make a special point of subordinating the workers' movement to capitalist politics. The liberal politicians of both main capitalist parties know that the contradiction between the worker and the capitalist cannot be denied altogether. Hence they are willing to allow the workers some minor economic grumbling and to debate a few pennies with the capitalists or the exact extent of the concessions to be extracted from their hides, provided the workers don't rock the boat and instead slavishly accept the capitalist system and the overall "reindustrialization" drive. The labor bureaucrats join the liberal capitalists to make a liberal-labor coalition, where the workers are considered mere voting cattle for the capitalist politicians, voting cattle that have some special interests on economic matters, just as, say, the tobacco lobby does. In the liberal-labor coalition, the liberals concede the need to bribe the labor bureaucrats and to shower the workers with empty words and promises, on condition that the trade union bureaucracy joins the capitalists in suppressing the overwhelming majority of the workers so that they can be led passively to the slaughter.

Thus the workers' movement is degraded by the labor bureaucrats to a special interest group of this or that capitalist party. The labor bureaucrats do their best to mobilize the workers into the reactionary, chauvinist and pro-imperialist campaigns of the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile the revisionist and opportunist forces paint the labor bureaucrats and the liberals in shining colors. As a result of this treachery, the workers' movement has been kept fragmented and subordinated to the bourgeoisie, while the political mass movements have been deprived of the strength of the working class and proletarian organization.

If the economic struggle is taken as complete in itself, then it will inevitably end up subordinated to this corrupt system of liberal-labor politics. In order for the economic struggle to play its role in helping to emancipate the working masses, it is essential for it to be waged as one part of the overall class struggle. This requires, among other things, that it be waged in closest connection with the struggle of the workers for their own independent political aims.

Thus it is extremely important for the workers to break out of the liberal-labor framework and build their own independent political movement. Without the organized participation of masses of proletarians at the center of the political and social movements, these mass movements are severely weakened. They are deprived of the consciousness, organization, solidity and striking force which only the working class can bring to them. As well, the economic struggles are bound to remain weak and the labor bureaucrats cannot be overcome without the working class building up its unified class struggle and its proletarian political party. And, of course, there can be no hope of carrying out the socialist revolution without the workers throwing themselves heart and soul into revolutionary politics.

Despite the treachery of the labor bureaucrats, there remains an acute political ferment among the workers. There is wide distrust of the capitalists and their political parties. The political ferment among the workers can be seen in the turnout of workers at various protests and demonstrations, in political discussion at the factories, in reception to revolutionary literature, and so forth. The Marxist-Leninist Party stands for organizing this ferment into a solid force, into the independent political movement of the working class. The MLP carries out a wide range of work to mobilize the workers into building this movement and to orient the workers towards the struggle for the socialist revolution.

The Marxist-Leninist Party conducts extensive political agitation among the workers. The Party explains to the workers the revolutionary working class point of view on all the major questions of the day. It takes advantage of events that create wide political interest among the workers, such as big mass actions, various election campaigns, reactionary legislation, acts of aggression, political crises, etc., to organize widespread agitational campaigns.

Around its central organ, The Workers' Advocate, the MLP has built up a nationwide network of agitation and propaganda which trains the workers in maintaining a hostile stance to the policies and state power of the capitalists. This network not only educates the workers but it also helps to organize them. It does this by drawing them into work to develop and broaden the revolutionary agitation, to distribute literature, to carry out the political campaigns, to decide the burning questions of the revolutionary movement, etc.

In mobilizing the workers into the independent political movement, the Marxist-Leninist Party considers of special importance the mass demonstrations and protests on different questions. The MLP calls on the workers to take part in the mass protests and puts special stress on mobilizing the class conscious workers to participate in the mass movements as supporters of the revolutionary orientation of the proletarian party. This provides valuable political training.

All of this work of revolutionary action, organization and enlightenment is clearing the way to put the proletariat at the center of all the mass movements. With the success of this work, the different fronts of the mass struggle will no longer be detached from one another as they are presently, but they will become fronts of the independent movement of the working class. The proletariat will organize around itself other sections of the working people and lead them along the path of revolutionary struggle.

The mobilization of the workers into the work of building their own class party is of decisive importance in organizing the revolutionary movement of the working class. The Marxist-Leninist Party conducts strenuous work to imbue the workers with the party spirit. This is especially important in the U.S. because of the corrupt traditions of liberal- labor politics, a tradition which is opposed tooth and nail to the very concept of a distinct party of the workers and instead reduces the workers to merely a special interest group within the capitalist parties, mainly the Democratic Party.

The proletarian vanguard party is essential to defending the interests of the working class on all questions. It is essential to providing leadership to both the economic and political movements of the proletariat and to ensuring that all the struggles of the workers play their proper role in building up the forces for the socialist revolution.

(iii) Revolutionary work in the factories and the trade unions

Work in the Factories and Other Work Places

In its work to build the revolutionary workers' movement, the Marxist-Leninist Party focuses on the factories and other work places where the workers are concentrated. The factory is not only an arena of exploitation but it is also a center of organization. Here there is a constant confrontation between labor and capital. Here the workers have been concentrated and placed in socialized conditions which lend themselves to the development of discipline and organization. In short, the factories and other work places are natural grounds for the development of class consciousness, organization and struggle.

The Marxist-Leninist Party carries out all-sided work at the factories aimed at developing the class struggle and winning the workers to communism. The Marxist-Leninist Party works to develop the workers' class consciousness through both economic and political agitation.

The Party provides guidance to the economic struggle. It carries out economic exposures and draws out the workings of the capitalist profit system. Both by means of leaflets and daily discussion, the Party rouses the workers, using all sorts of incidents, from major abuses to minor ones, that constantly take place at the factories. The Party actively participates in the strikes and other actions which break out. It uses the daily experience of the workers to expose the treachery and sabotage of the trade union bureaucrats.

The Marxist-Leninist Party brings political agitation to the factories. It distributes leaflets and newspapers on the burning political events of the day. It draws workers from the factories into the Party's political campaigns, such as during elections, demonstrations, and so on. The factory serves as an important base for mobilizing the workers not just in the economic struggle but also into other fronts of struggle and revolutionary work.

The Marxist-Leninist Party trains the workers in revolutionary theory. It shows the workers the tremendous importance of revolutionary theory for the advance of the workers' movement. Thus the Party draws the workers in the factories into the discussion and study of Marxist-Leninist theory, using a variety of forms for this purpose. It encourages the workers to pay attention to and participate in the ideological and political controversies between Marxism-Leninism and opportunism.

In the course of all its work, the MLP strives to build up revolutionary organization at the work places. It seeks to build a wide range of organizational forms, from very loose to tightly knit ones. The Party works hard to bring forward workers who are enthusiastic to support one or another front of the Party's work.

The core that the MLP seeks to build at the factories is the party organization itself. This provides leadership and guidance to all other forms of organization among the workers. The MLP pays special attention to developing an organized pro-party trend. Thus, while working closely with workers who support only one or another front of the Party's work, the MLP recognizes that ultimate success in building organization at the factories depends on building up the Marxist-Leninist trend among the workers, the trend which supports the all-round work of the Party.

In the course of the development of the class struggle, the workers also spontaneously set up various forms of organization to advance their fight. These organizations do not exist in a vacuum, but are immediately influenced by various political trends. If these groups are to prosper and contribute to the general political motion of the working class, they must resolutely break away from all capitalist, reformist and opportunist trends. The Marxist-Leninist Party encourages and welcomes the spontaneous urge of the workers for organization, pays close, comradely attention to the working class organizations that are. thus formed, and seeks to influence such organizations to adopt policies which are consistently and truly independent of the capitalists and the labor bureaucrats. In this way, the MLP strives to have these groups play their full role in the class struggle and to win them over to the side of revolutionary Marxism- Leninism.

The work of the MLP in the factories today is laying the foundations for building up the factories as the fortresses of revolutionary communism in the future.

Work in the Trade Unions

The Marxist-Leninist Party carries out work both in the factories and, where they exist, in the trade unions. However, the work in the unions is carried out as a part of the Party's general factory work and not the other way around.

The trade unions historically came up as the most elementary form of organization among the workers. They originated out of the efforts of the workers to organize in defense of their interests against the abuses of the capitalists. They emerged out of the recognition that, as individuals, the workers are helpless before the employers and that competition among themselves is only helpful to the capitalists.

These factors remain important in how the workers approach the unions today. This is why the workers who belong to unions look to them to defend their day-to-day interests. And when workers organize into unions today, it is these ideas which motivate them to do so. The simplest and most elementary idea of organization is the need to unite in the economic struggle against the employers, a necessity comprehensible even to the most politically inexperienced sections of the working class.

At the same time, the trade unions in the U.S. today have very serious problems and cannot be regarded as true proletarian unions. The trade union apparatus has long been captured by a reactionary and deeply entrenched bureaucracy which has imposed a pro-capitalist policy on the unions. This bureaucracy defends capitalism and constantly undermines the struggle of the workers against exploitation. As a result, the capitalists are able to use the union bureaucracy to pacify and discipline the workers. Indeed, it is precisely because of this that large numbers of workers are more and more discontented with the unions.

In order to carry through their treacherous policy, the union bureaucracy has established a corrupt anti-democratic regime in the unions. Using the most highhanded methods, they ride roughshod over the rank and file and suppress any attempt by the workers to resist the bureaucrats' treachery inside the unions. As well, the unions have over the years become more and more integrated into the capitalist state apparatus. A ton of laws, rules and regulations weighs down on the unions to shackle the workers from being able to wage any effective struggles against the capitalists.

As part of their treachery, the union bureaucrats raise the watchword of "trade union neutrality'' with respect to political questions. This slogan is a fraud because the bureaucrats have actually hitched the unions to the side of the capitalists and their political parties. They constantly take part in political campaigns on the side of the bourgeoisie. Some union bureaucrats, like the notorious leaders of the Teamsters union, support the Republican Party, but the overwhelming majority of the bureaucrats are partisans of the Democratic Party. They are active flunkeys of the Democratic Party, and in the last few years the AFL-CIO has stepped up its integration with the Democratic Party even further. As well, when the bureaucrats want to give a profound cover to their squelching of the mass struggle, they sometimes whine that the mass struggle is useless because the question must be solved politically, by which, they are quick to explain, they mean voting for the Democratic Party. All this might make it appear, on the surface, as if the labor bureaucrats had abandoned the slogan of "trade union neutrality.'' But let the workers try to support any progressive cause in their unions, let them oppose U.S. imperialism or call for a real struggle against racism and reaction, and the trade union bureaucrats are quick to bring back the slogan of "trade union neutrality" and to beat their breasts about how divisive political issues are, how the unions should steer clear of politics, etc., etc. Trade union neutrality always was and is still today a hypocritical slogan directed against socialism and revolutionary politics. It was never intended to be and never does restrict the union bureaucrats from taking the most politically partisan stands, so long as these stands are pro-capitalist, anti-communist and reactionary stands.

In fact the unions can never be politically neutral. Their activity must inevitably help one side or the other; either the trade unions help develop the independent political stand of the workers, or they help shackle the workers to the capitalist parties. Thus the workers should tear down the fraudulent banner of the "neutrality" of the trade unions. Proper trade unions should help their members to take a conscious part in political life. They should support the proletarian party against the capitalist parties. But trade unions should use the political methods appropriate to trade unions. For example, they should not expel or harass workers with differing political views, but seek to unite all workers, irrespective of their views, who see the need to resist the capitalists.

Although the American trade unions have been captured by the agents of the capitalists, this does not mean that the Marxist-Leninists and class conscious workers should boycott them. By no means. The trade union form of organization remains important for the workers' movement. As well, the unions are still composed of workers and the workers inside them look to them to defend their interests.

Indeed it is precisely because of the importance of the trade union form that the bourgeoisie has put so much effort in establishing its domination over the unions. The bourgeoisie knows that the unions are a powerful lever for directing the working class movement forward or backward.

For this very reason, the class conscious proletariat must fight on the trade union front. It must fight to bring into being a situation where the trade union form of organization is in the hands of the working class. The Marxist-Leninist Party believes that it is essential to work inside the unions. The question is not whether to take part in the present trade unions or not, but what policy should guide work inside the unions. Revolutionary work in the unions is not aimed at achieving a reconciliation with the trade union bureaucracy. Rather it is aimed at winning the masses of workers to the class struggle and revolution. It is aimed at eliminating the influence of the bureaucrats among the workers.

Thus revolutionary work in the unions is not aimed at creating illusions that somehow the bureaucracy can be reformed or "moved to the left." The trade unions have become so heavily bureaucratized and the stranglehold of the government's rules and regulations is so heavy that there can be no illusions about some easy road to the victory of a policy of class struggle in the unions. Indeed many militant workers have come to grief because they placed their hopes in turning the unions around through reforming the bureaucrats.

The development of the workers' movement must inevitably proceed through the setting up of unions with a genuinely proletarian policy. But there are no shortcuts to achieving this. It is only the development of a most intense class struggle on the part of the workers which will bring proletarian unions into being. Only the class struggle can shake up and smash the weight of bureaucratic tutelage and the shackles of the government's rules and regulations. And only the course of the mass struggle will determine the method by which the proletarian unions will be formed. In this regard, the question of whether the current trade unions will be radically transformed in one way or another, or whether entirely new unions will come into existence, can only be determined by the course of the actual struggle.

Today the foundations of the future revolutionary trade unions of the workers are being laid by the work of the Marxist-Leninist Party. The MLP works tirelessly to encourage the workers to take up the road of class struggle and independent organization. The development of the actual struggle is crucial for educating the workers on the need for independent action and organization.

In its work in the trade unions, the Marxist-Leninist Party orients its entire work to winning the rank and file. It carries work directly among the workers and as well it utilizes work inside the trade union apparatus (for example, running in trade union elections). Since this apparatus is controlled by the reactionary bureaucrats, the Marxist-Leninists cherish no illusions about this apparatus. Work inside the apparatus can only be a subsidiary front of work, which must be coordinated with direct work among the workers. The aim of work in the apparatus is to facilitate winning the workers over to a revolutionary policy.

Central to the progress of revolutionary work on the trade union front is the building up and extension of the influence and organization of the Marxist-Leninist Party among the workers. The organization of the class conscious vanguard is essential to providing orientation for the independent organization of the workers. It is essential to organizing every front of struggle by the workers.

[Photo: Demonstration of striking metal trades workers in Seattle, May 6,1983.]

[Photo: The Party takes revolutionary politics deep among the working masses -- workers in New York City respond with enthusiasm to 1981 May Day demonstration organized by the MLP.]

C. The Struggle Against Militarism and Imperialist War

With the Carter and Reagan presidencies, U.S. imperialism has launched a new round of stepped-up war preparations and aggressive acts abroad. Year after year the war budget is being boosted. Step by step the draft is being brought back. Already the U.S. armed forces have invaded Grenada and are involved in interventionist "small'' wars in Central America and Lebanon. Meanwhile, the Pentagon goes ahead with its diabolical plans for a "winnable" nuclear war with the Soviet social-imperialists. Both the danger of more aggressive wars against the oppressed peoples and of an imperialist world war grow greater with every passing day.

This frenzy of warmongering has given rise to widespread concern and outrage among the working masses. In recent years, protest actions have repeatedly broken out on a number of anti-militarist fronts. These show that the development of a powerful mass upsurge against militarism and imperialist war is on the agenda.

The development of such an upsurge is of great significance for the revolutionary movement. The experience of the 1960's offers a good example of the role of the struggle of the masses against U.S. imperialist aggression. Beginning with small and scattered protests in the early 1960's, this struggle grew into a huge upsurge against the U.S. war in Indochina by the end of that decade.

This movement brought millions into political motion, including youth and students, workers, women, and the oppressed nationalities. It saw big demonstrations in the streets of the cities. It saw students battling militarism in the schools. It saw militant mass resistance to the draft. It saw the development of fierce struggles by the GI's right inside the armed forces. The struggle against the U.S. war in Indochina became very intense, involving many sharp clashes with the capitalist authorities.

The mass movement helped contribute to the defeat of U.S. aggression in Indochina. It was an important act of solidarity with the heroic liberation fighters of Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos who struck the decisive blows at U.S. imperialism.

The mass movement was a powerful school for the radicalization of the masses. There was widespread disillusionment with the liberals of the Democratic Party because of the role of the Democratic administrations in conducting the war. Many came to an understanding that the aggression in Viet Nam was not an accident or an aberration but the result of the most deep-rooted drives and policies of American monopoly capitalism. Based on such a realization, many activists arrived at revolutionary conclusions about the need to fight for the overthrow of the U.S. imperialist monster.

Although the upsurge of the 1960's ebbed away, many of its effects on the consciousness of the masses can still be seen. There continues to be a wide distrust among the masses towards Washington's jingoism and military adventures against foreign peoples. Indeed, the capitalist rulers themselves recognize this. This is why they have launched a crusade to exorcise the "Viet Nam syndrome.'' As they launch new aggressions, they seek to wipe out the specter of 1960's style mass opposition.

But this will not succeed. The protests of recent years show the wide gulf which separates the masses from the warmongers. The oppositional sentiments of today are bound to grow into a new upsurge of struggle against imperialism.

The Marxist-Leninist Party stands for organizing a vigorous struggle against militarism and aggression. It holds that every imperialist aggression and every step towards new imperialist wars must be fought. The MLP welcomes the protests which have broken out against the war preparations of the U.S. government. It places itself in the thick of the mass struggles. All these struggles must be built up into a movement which is capable of mounting a really powerful challenge to the U.S. war drive.

War Is the Continuation of Politics by Violent Means

The struggle against militarism and imperialist war must be directed right at the exploiters and imperialists who are the cause of war. The source of war does not lie in the "evil nature'' of humanity or in the blunders of otherwise well- intentioned governments, but in the division of society into classes, into exploiters and exploited, oppressors and oppressed. In modern society, it is capitalism and imperialism which are the source of war.

Wars arise because the imperialists and exploiters enforce their rule through military force and mass slaughter. They throw themselves upon the working masses striving for their emancipation, and they set huge armies to fight each other to determine which overbloated exploiter will be top dog. Furthermore, the capitalists make huge profits from wars and war preparations. Thus the solution to the problem of war is inseparable from the fight against capitalism and exploitation. To put an end to war, it is necessary to destroy imperialism and exploitation. The struggle against imperialist war must be one part of the struggle against the capitalist rulers.

In judging war, there must be a concrete and historical study of each war. Is it a war between two reactionary sides, a senseless slaughter to line the pockets of the millionaires? Or is it aggression by one side and a just war of liberation by the other side? The MLP recognizes that such wars as, for example, national liberation wars and revolutionary civil wars to overthrow the rule of the exploiters are just wars which bring closer the day of world liberation and thus the elimination of all war altogether.

In this regard, it is indispensable to make use of the scientific thesis affirmed by Lenin that "war is the continuation of politics by other (i.e., violent) means." Each war must be assessed not mainly on the basis of the declarations by the combatants, but on the basis of the politics which preceded the war, which continues during the war, and which guides each side. The question is not necessarily which side struck first or makes this or that nice-sounding declaration, but which side is fighting for liberation and which side is fighting to uphold exploitation and oppression. For example, a war of the oppressed colonial slaves against their colonial overlords is a just war on the part of the slaves, independent of whether they fired the first shot or not, just as it is war of aggression on the part of the overlords, a war to preserve exploitation.

Laying bare the connection between war and the politics that lie behind it is essential to expose the lies that the imperialists use to justify their warmongering. It teaches the working people to look behind the empty phrases which the capitalist politicians bandy about so freely and look down below at the real deeds and motivations of the imperialists.

For example, the U.S. imperialists swear to all and sundry that they are only arming for "defense.'' The reformist politicians echo this with their claim that the U.S. war budget is only a little too large, and it should be pared down a bit so that it is still adequate for "defense.'' But the lie of U.S. imperialism's "defensive'' intentions is exposed by the fact that U.S. imperialism is following the politics of dominating a vast world empire. The numerous U.S. aggressions around the world are not accidents, but new proofs of the bloodthirsty and plundering nature of the imperialist system. Hence it is not a question of trying to divide the U.S. war budget into defensive and offensive components, but that every penny that goes to the Pentagon is a penny that helps enforce imperialist dictate around the world and helps build up a huge machine that can also be used to defend the rule of the capitalists at home.

U.S. imperialism hypocritically raises its hands and says that anyone who is against war must condemn the workers and peasants of other countries, for they use force and violence too, But there can be no real condemnation of U.S imperialist aggression without support for the just wars of liberation that resist it. Thus, just as the MLP condemns the war of aggression against El Salvador being carried out by the U.S. imperialists and their fascist lackeys, it supports the liberation war of the Salvadoran workers and peasants.

If the real warmongers and aggressors are to be fought, there must be a political and class approach to the fight against militarism and war. This is diametrically opposed to the pacifist approach. Some honest activists, out of their revulsion at the horrors of war, find themselves attracted to pacifist ideology. They think that the most radical way to combat militarism is to oppose all wars without distinction or even all use of force. Instead of directing their struggle against the imperialist warmongers, they direct it at the use of force in general. Such a stand, however, only weakens the development of the anti-war struggle.

The simple truth of the matter is that pacifism has never been able to build up a serious opposition to war. This is not surprising. Pacifism glosses over the politics that lie behind wars and the connection between imperialism and war. Hence it has no idea of where to strike its blows or where to find the real forces for the anti-war struggle. Instead of a real struggle against the warmongers, pacifism continually tends to degenerate into empty phrases and pious wishes about transforming the war dogs into peaceful lambs and of beating swords into plowshares. Instead of organizing the working masses for struggle, it leads to trying to enlighten the imperialists and win them over by a display of goodness and purity of heart.

In the realm of practical politics, pious words about peace don't harm the warmongers at all. From Reagan to Andropov, from Democrat to Republican, all the main imperialist spokesmen have learned long ago to clothe their plans for aggression in pious phrases about peace. The imperialist politicians mouth these phrases as a deceptive screen to cover their fiendish war plans.

Thus pacifism only helps to disarm the fighting capacity of the masses who wish to fight militarism. Furthermore, by opposing all war, pacifism condemns revolution and revolutionary wars. If the oppressed masses were to accept such advice, it would mean abandoning the fight against the tyrants and oppressors. The oppressors arm themselves to the teeth for suppressing the working masses of other countries and for suppressing the people at home. They daily use violence to maintain their rule, even in suppressing strikes and demonstrations. To think that they are simply going to give up their huge arsenals without firing a shot and consent to be overthrown is nonsense. To accept the pacifist strategy means, therefore, reconciling oneself to permanent oppression. Nor would this stop war, for as long as the exploiters and imperialists continue their rule, just so long will the world be condemned to permanent bloodshed.

Put Opposition to Imperialism at the Center of the Struggle

In order to strengthen the mass struggles against militarism and war and to sever them from the influence of the imperialist bourgeoisie, the Marxist-Leninist Party works to put opposition to imperialism at the center of these struggles and to overcome the influence of the Democratic Party.

The appeal to put anti-imperialism at the center of the mass struggles raises the masses from general sentiments against militarism and war to a more conscious position. It explains to them that the source of the war danger is not the accidental aberrations of some unenlightened individuals but arises from the longstanding policies of political parties and classes in defense of a whole rotten social and economic system, the system of imperialism. This analysis exposes the connection between militarism and aggression and the interests of a definite class, the capitalist ruling class. In short, it begins to provide a class perspective to the fight against the U.S. war drive.

The fight against imperialism must include a fight against the imperialist parties. Otherwise, it is meaningless to talk of opposing imperialism as a system.

The Democratic Party is the main force used by the bourgeoisie to undermine the movement against imperialist war. This party, like its Republican counterpart, is a party of war and aggression. At the same time, this party is the main instrument of the capitalists to deceive the working masses. Thus, the Democratic Party, as a screen over its own warmongering activity, presents itself as concerned about peace and opposed to the extremes of the Republicans. The object of this is to lull the masses into complacency and prevent them from rising up in fierce battles against the war plans of the bourgeoisie. The Democrats seek to convert the movement against imperialist war into its opposite, a movement to strengthen imperialism. Thus they strove to convert the struggle against the reintroduction of the draft into a national debate on how best to strengthen the U.S. Army. Thus they strive to divert the movement against U.S. aggression against Nicaragua into supporting giving more funds to the Honduran generals (the Boland-Zablocki Amendment). Thus they strive to divert the outrage against the escalating military budgets into a struggle to get more bang for the buck.

The social-democratic and pacifist political trends work as the carriers of the influence of the Democratic Party in the mass struggles. These trends currently dominate the official leadership of the mass protests against militarism and aggression. They work to tie the mass movement to the coattails of the Democrats. Instead of boldly developing the mass struggle, they subordinate it to the needs of the impotent shadowboxing of the Democrats in Congress. Recently they have not wanted to organize almost any mass actions at all. But when forced to call demonstrations because of the angry sentiments of the masses, they try to tone down the politics of the protests. They refuse to target imperialism and instead promote illusions in the warmongers themselves. On the pretext of being "realistic," they seek to subordinate the mass movement to the schemes of the Democrats.

The Marxist-Leninist Party fights hard against the treacherous influence of the Democratic Party and its flunkeys. It encourages the mass movement to target both capitalist parties, to reject reliance on the lying politicians in Congress, and to not allow itself to be used as a springboard for the electoral ambitions of the Democrats.

Recognition that the source of militarism and aggression lies in imperialism does not necessarily signify an understanding of what the forces are that can overthrow the imperialist system or of the need for socialist revolution. Yet, without understanding and having confidence in the class struggle, the stand of opposition to imperialism will not be stable but will have a tendency to vacillate; it will usually have a tendency to fall back into reconciliation with the Democratic Party or this or that variety of capitalist reformism. Thus each step of the activists towards supporting not just anti-imperialism in general, but also proletarian anti-imperialism, strengthens the fight against imperialist war immeasurably.

Opposition to imperialism is a general principle of Marxism-Leninism. In the current situation, putting opposition to imperialism in the center of the anti-war struggle, combined with fighting against the influence of the two big imperialist parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, is also a tactical appeal. It is not equivalent to the full program of the socialist revolution. Opposition to imperialism as a system is an important step towards a revolutionary stand, but it is not the full stand itself. The anti-imperialist slogans are an appeal to the masses which helps awaken them to political life and consciousness. They help sever the masses from the influence of the Democratic Party and the capitalist parties generally. They are well adapted to the present situation in the U.S. because, among other things, anti-imperialist agitation has a long history and has penetrated widely among the masses and because of the experience of the struggle against the U.S. war of aggression in Viet Nam and against the various other U.S. aggressions around the world. But general anti-imperialist agitation and organization does not exhaust the tasks of revolutionary work in the anti-war movement.

Thus it is crucial that the proletarian wing of the anti-war movement be constantly built up and strengthened. The working class must be brought into all the actions against imperialist war so that it can take its place in the center of the anti-imperialist struggle. The activists must be won over to the standpoint of the class struggle and to see the role of the proletariat as the leading and main force of the coming socialist revolution. No artificial wall must be placed between anti-imperialist work and communist work.

Direct work must be done in support of the perspective of the socialist revolution. It is true that the development of a strong movement against imperialism puts a spoke in the imperialist war plans. But, in order to abolish the threat of imperialist war altogether, the socialist revolution is needed. The experience of the fight against U.S. aggression in Viet Nam is a telling example. Even short of being able to achieve the socialist revolution, a powerful struggle against imperialist war can strike important blows at imperialism and help build up conscious revolutionary forces. However, without the socialist revolution, imperialism remains alive; its enslavement of other peoples continues; and it will return again and again to new rounds of imperialist bloodletting when its interests require it.

Thus the Marxist-Leninist Party works to promote the class perspective in the fight against imperialist war, to bring the proletariat to the center of the anti-imperialist struggle, and to build up the Marxist-Leninist trend within the movement. In this way it puts forward an inspiring perspective before the anti-imperialist movement; it guides the movement so that it serves as a force for the socialist revolution; it fights vacillations and the influence of the reformists; and it ranges the anti-war movement on the side of the proletariat.

Support the Self-Determination of the Peoples Against U.S. Aggression

One of the principal thrusts of the U.S. war drive is aimed at suppressing the struggles of the working masses worldwide, as is especially apparent in recent U.S. activity in Latin America, Asia and Africa. The world situation is characterized by frequent outbreaks of mass upsurges, revolutionary uprisings and the growth of popular liberation wars, such as is seen in Central and South America, the Philippines, etc. The U.S. government sees itself as No. 1 world policeman and stands ready to intervene directly on behalf of the profits of the U.S. multinationals and the local reactionaries.

Acting as world hangman, the U.S. imperialist armed forces have recently been involved in aggression in several areas of the world. In the Caribbean they carried out a savage invasion of the tiny island of Grenada in order to establish a puppet regime and smash the toiling masses. In the Middle East, U.S. troops are propping up the fascist Phalangist government against the Lebanese left and the Palestinian resistance. And in Central America, U.S. forces are directing the Salvadoran fascist regime's war on the liberation fighters, leading Somocista mercenaries against Nicaragua, and establishing a regional base for counterrevolution on the territory of Honduras. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has been busy setting up new military bases in diverse parts of the world and beefing up its Rapid Deployment Force for international aggression.

Such activity by U.S. imperialism is of course nothing new. The history of U.S. imperialism is a bloodstained history of countless invasions, aggressions and genocidal wars against the oppressed peoples. Just since the end of the Second World War alone, U.S. imperialism has carried out brutal wars against the peoples of Korea and Indochina, invaded the Dominican Republic, organized reactionary coups, and provided backing to other Western imperialist marauders for colonial wars and campaigns of counter-insurgency terror.

U.S. imperialism's drive to suppress the oppressed peoples has always encountered opposition at home. This was widest and most intense during the aggressive war against Viet Nam in the 1960's. In recent years, the working masses have again begun to take to the streets in protest of U.S. intervention in Central America, the invasion of Grenada and the U.S.-Israeli war in Lebanon. As U.S. aggression inevitably escalates, the resistance of the masses is bound to grow.

The Marxist-Leninist Party enthusiastically welcomes the protests against U.S. aggression. It stands for a stern fight against every act of piracy, intervention and war by the U.S. government. The MLP defends the right of the oppressed peoples to self-determination. The peoples must be allowed to determine their own destinies, free from imperialist dictate and intervention.

In the fight against U.S. aggression, the Marxist-Leninist Party squarely targets imperialism. The acts of naked aggression by the U.S. government vividly show that it is imperialist aims which lie behind the U.S. war drive. Indeed, even the public declarations of the U.S. rulers are laced with open avowals of bare-faced imperialist aims, such as is seen by the references to Central America as the "back yard" of the U.S. or how the Middle East, thousands of miles from the shores of the U.S., is part of its "vital interests."

The social-democrats and other opportunist forces in the movement against U.S. aggression refuse to target U.S. imperialism. This is because they do not want to go beyond what is acceptable to the Democratic Party. This is incredible treachery considering that the Democratic Party is no less a champion of aggression than the Republicans. They initiated the latest round of U.S. intervention in Central America under Carter and have continued to support it under Reagan. They are among the biggest boosters of Israeli zionism and the genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people.

Both the Republican and Democratic Parties try to camouflage their support for aggression with talk of "peace," "human rights," "democracy," etc. But it is the Democrats who put special emphasis on this rhetoric. For example, it is the Democrats who are the biggest champions of covering their support for intervention in Central America with propaganda about a "political solution." All this is of course nothing but a hypocritical coat of paint over warmongering, aimed at lulling the masses here in the U.S. and at getting the revolutionary fighters abroad to let down their guard against U.S. imperialism's schemes.

The social-democrats and other opportunists line up behind the deceptive maneuvers of the Democrats. They support a U.S.-dictated "political solution" in El Salvador. In 1982 they supported the fraud of U.S. troops entering Lebanon as so-called "peacekeeping" forces. Such stands are a violation of the right of the oppressed peoples to self-determination. The U.S. imperialists have no right to impose any "solutions" in Central America, the Middle East, etc. They must get out, lock, stock and barrel. The movement against U.S. intervention must combat all forms of U.S. intervention, no matter whether it is cloaked in naked militarist terms or in "enlightened" and "liberal" clothing. Anything less is support for imperialism.

Finally, it is important that the working masses of the U.S. should not only condemn U.S. imperialist crimes, but also go on to support the liberation struggles of the peoples who are faced with American aggression. The workers and progressive people of the U.S. cannot be neutral in these situations. We must side with the working people abroad who are fighting for justice and liberation. We must support every blow struck at U.S. imperialism, our common enemy. In this way, a joint front of struggle against the common imperialist enemy is built up. This is an important factor in combating chauvinism and jingoism, in promoting internationalist consciousness among the American workers. It is a powerful assistance to the growth of a revolutionary movement against U.S. imperialism.

The Fight Against the Nuclear Arms Buildup

A major current of anti-militarist protest in recent years has been directed at the gargantuan nuclear buildup by the U.S. government. This is part of an international wave of struggle against nuclear war preparations taking place throughout the capitalist metropolises, especially in Western Europe.

This movement shows the widespread ferment among the masses against the threat of nuclear holocaust which grows worse with every passing day. New and more monstrous weapons systems are being designed and built. A new generation of missiles is being placed in Europe. And there is open talk by the U.S. militarists about "first strikes" and "winnable" nuclear wars.

The Marxist-Leninist Party supports the fight against the nuclear arms buildup. It stands with the struggle against the stationing of cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe, against the MX plans, and against all the new weapons systems. It also supports the opposition to the nuclear energy program, which is closely connected with the nuclear war preparations of U.S. imperialism; the nuclear energy program also poses a serious threat of radiation poisoning to the people, is a source of wild profiteering for the big monopolies, and serves, through the export of reactor systems, as another means by which U.S. imperialism tightens its economic grip on various countries.

The Marxist-Leninist Party works to channel the anti- nuclear sentiment of the masses towards a real fight against the warmongers. It shows that the nuclear arsenals are not simply some technological aberration or the result of some madmen in the White House and the Pentagon but the product of the imperialist system. The nuclear arsenals are being expanded for the aim of waging an inter-imperialist war with the Soviet social-imperialists and also for carrying out nuclear blackmail against the revolutionary struggles worldwide. The nuclear buildup of the Soviet Union is also for the same reactionary aims.

The Marxist-Leninist Party opposes the nuclear arsenals of all the imperialist and social-imperialist powers. But it must not be forgotten that here in the U.S., our duty, first and foremost, is to fight against "our own" war drive, "our own" imperialist warmongers.

The anti-nuclear demonstrations by the masses show that there is a widespread desire for a serious fight against nuclear warmongering. However the social-democratic and pacifist leaders which dominate the organizing of most of these protests do not want a real fight to emerge on this issue. They try to remove any militancy or political content from these demonstrations. They try to divert the movement away from fighting the concrete nuclear war plans of the U.S. government or to make it into a movement with no enemy, a toothless wonder. They refuse to target any of the actual forces responsible for the arms race.

Today one of the principal instruments of the social-democratic and pacifist leaders to dissipate the anti-nuclear protest movement is the campaign for the "nuclear freeze." This campaign is billed as a way to fight the nuclear arms buildup. Believing this to be true, millions of people have voted for the freeze proposal in referendums across the country. But the fact of the matter is that the leaders of the freeze campaign are carrying out a cynical hoax against the anti-nuclear sentiment of the masses.

The nuclear freeze is not a plan which opposes the nuclear buildup. It does not call for a struggle against the imperialist warmongers but asks the people to rely on the "reasonableness" of the imperialists themselves. It asks the people to expect a solution to come from negotiations between the war dogs in Washington and Moscow. This is nothing but a rehash of SALT and numerous other "disarmament" talks which have done nothing but put a hypocritical whitewash over a skyrocketing arms race. What is more, even if the freeze proposal were to be agreed upon by the superpowers, it still would not dismantle a single bomb or warhead!

The nuclear freeze campaign is not an anti-militarist campaign at all. The leaders of the campaign have openly brought in outright warmongers, such as admirals and generals and other imperialist big shots, as leaders of the anti-nuclear protests. They have promoted as anti-war heroes the imperialist politicians in Congress, who vote for the freeze with one hand while they vote for gargantuan war budgets with the other. While the masses are told by the freeze leaders that money saved by the freeze would go towards meeting "human needs," the politicians whom they rely on in Congress declare quite candidly that any money saved would go towards beefing up the "conventional" arsenal of the U.S. war machine. Indeed, while posing as opponents of the nuclear buildup, the freeze leaders refuse to oppose the "conventional" wars of U.S. imperialism. For example, at the huge anti-nuclear demonstration on June 12, 1982 in New York, the leaders of the freeze campaign did not have one single word of condemnation against the U.S.-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon which was then raining death and destruction on the Lebanese and Palestinian people.

A real fight against the nuclear arms buildup thus calls for exposure of the swindle of the nuclear freeze. Instead of trusting in the sensibilities of the warmongers, it is the masses of working people who must be organized into a powerful force against nuclear war.

On the Struggle Against the Draft and Work Inside the Military

In 1980 Carter announced the restoration of registration for the military draft. Reagan has continued registration and taken a series of measures to expedite the return of the draft. He has begun prosecution of a number of young men who have refused to register and also instituted other coercive measures to pressure the youth to register. All these steps point to the fact that the U.S. government is deadly serious about restoring the draft. This is an important part of the current round of war preparations by the U.S. imperialists.

The launching of draft registration was met with a storm of protest in 1980-81. Hundreds of demonstrations were organized. Young people in the high schools and colleges attempted to build organizations to fight the draft and militarism. Since that time, however, there has been a lull in the anti-draft movement. But by no means is the struggle over.

The Marxist-Leninist Party opposes the restoration of the draft. It fights it as a part of its struggle against all imperialist war preparations. The experience of the 1960's, as well as the experience of the anti-draft protests of 1980-81, show that the anti-draft struggle will continue to be an important front of the anti-militarist struggle.

In fighting the draft, the MLP places the fight against imperialism to the fore. The MLP is opposed to the U.S. armed forces because these are imperialist forces. It opposes the draft as a measure aimed at strengthening the imperialist army. Certain imperialist politicians and their social-democratic supporters claim to oppose the draft, but they do so from the standpoint of debating how best to strengthen the imperialist armed forces. They believe that it better serves U.S. imperialism's interests today to have a "volunteer" army rather than a conscripted one. The Marxist-Leninist Party fights against the attempts by the capitalist politicians and social-democrats to orient the anti-draft movement to working for a strengthening of the U.S. armed forces.

In the course of the struggle against registration and the draft, the issue of refusal to register comes up. There are many who have refused to register and there will be those who will resist the draft when it is restored. The MLP supports the courageous stand of those who take such a stand and face persecution and the threats of imprisonment. But the MLP does not give a general call to refuse registration or the draft. It believes that it hurts the struggle against militarism and war to give the impression that refusal, if only enough people take part, can stop imperialist war. This has never happened. The imperialist warmongers cannot be fought by individual acts of conscience, no matter how courageous. To fight militarism and reactionary war, it is necessary to build the mass revolutionary struggle against imperialism.

The value of draft resistance is that it signifies a courageous protest against militarism and helps to draw sections of the people into more conscious and wider forms of struggle. Those who refuse to register or to get drafted cannot leave their struggle simply at that act, but must go on and take part in the mass struggle against imperialism.

Draft resistance is however part of a bigger picture. There are other sections of the young people who will take a different attitude on the question.

There are those who register with the aim of fighting militarism and imperialism from within the armed forces. This section fights the attempts to restore the draft but, when going into the army becomes compulsory, they will accept their conscription into the armed forces in order to fight from the inside. This is a bold and courageous stand and it deserves the utmost support as struggle inside the military is ultimately one of the decisive fronts of struggle against imperialist war. At present this section of activists is quite small. But once drafted and inside the military, these activists will find their number multiplied many-fold as they link up with the other conscripted youth or those who have gotten ensnared in the "volunteer" army.

It must be borne in mind that the overwhelming majority of youth will eventually register because they find no alternative and the full force of the state bears down on them one by one. This does not mean that they have avoided struggle by registering, for they will find themselves in a difficult and dangerous struggle inside the military once they are drafted. This section must not be neglected by the anti-imperialist movement or considered to be the enemy; rather they too must be drawn into the anti-militarist demonstrations and other activities.

The same holds true for those working youths who have gotten ensnared in the present "volunteer" army. The majority of the GI's enter the army because of the pressure of poverty and unemployment. The anti-imperialist movement must pay close attention to all opportunities to draw these young people into the struggle.

There are already various signs of small stirrings inside the armed forces. There have been a number of instances of GI's taking part in protests against U.S. intervention in Central America and other anti-war activities. There are also signs of wide disenchantment with the U.S. presence in Lebanon, Central America, etc. These cracks and fissures are bound to grow.

The experience of the GI movement in the 1960's shows that the ordinary soldiers can and will be organized into a force against imperialism. Winning over the rank-and-file soldiers is ultimately an important question for the development of the revolution.

[Photo: MLP contingent marching in a demonstration against U.S. intervention in El Salvador, Washington, D.C., March 27,1982.]

[Photo: On June 12,1982, close to a million people poured into demonstrations, such as this one in New York City, to oppose the nuclear arms buildup of U.S. imperialism. The MLP participated wholeheartedly in these actions. The Party raised the slogan "To fight nuclear weapons, fight imperialism!" and worked to expose the fraud of the "nuclear freeze."]

D. The Struggle Against Racism and National Oppression

The mass movements against racism and national oppression are one of the important fronts of the mass struggles in the U.S. From the slave revolts and the Native people's resistance wars in earlier centuries to the demonstrations and mass rebellions of the 1960's, the oppressed nationalities have repeatedly risen up in heroic battles against the racist exploiters and their state machine.

The history of capitalist rule in this country is a history of the most savage racial and national oppression. It is a history which includes such infamy as the genocidal wars against the Native population and the inhuman enslavement of blacks. Racism has been institutionalized by the capitalist class and its state. Today tens of millions of people suffer under the terrible yoke of national oppression. The black people, the Mexican nationality people, Puerto Ricans, Native people, Asian-Americans and other nationalities are subject to barbaric discrimination, racist brutality and the worst conditions of life and work.

Racism has long been a bulwark of all political reaction in the U.S. It is a weapon systematically used by the capitalists to try to divide the workers of different races and nationalities and thereby to weaken the workers' movement and keep down the entire working class. As well, racism is the source of enormous profits for the capitalists as they super-exploit the workers of the oppressed nationalities.

Any improvements in the conditions of the oppressed nationalities have come about only through the most bitter mass struggle. But capitalism is unable to provide full equality for the black people and other nationalities. Brutal racism and national oppression are the way of life in capitalist America. The capitalist rulers and their state are racist to the core. Their much-vaunted "freedom" and "democracy" stand exposed as nothing more than hollow and hypocritical lies.

The oppressed people have never taken their subjugation lying down. U.S. history is filled with examples of the valiant struggles of the long-suffering masses. The mighty upsurge of the black people, which began in the 1950's and grew to powerful rebellions in city after city in the late 1960's, is of particular importance. This movement shook capitalist America to its foundations. The powerful struggle of the black people, along with major battles waged by other nationalities, struck down some of the worst features of Jim Crow segregation. They greatly inspired the workers, youth, and women of every nationality and played an important role in the development of the revolutionary movement of the I960's.

Today the capitalists are seeking revenge against the black people and other oppressed nationalities. A renewed racist offensive is underway to take back every past gain that the masses had achieved through struggle. The Reagan administration is heading up a drive to further segregate the schools. Under the banner of opposing so-called "reverse discrimination," capitalist reaction is working to intensify discrimination in jobs and other fields of life. Brutal racist attacks and murders continue from the police and racist gangs. As well, the oppressed nationalities are forced to bear the heaviest load of the measures of the rich to shift the burden of the economic crisis onto the shoulders of the workers and poor.

The racist offensive of the bourgeoisie has given rise to widespread angry dissatisfaction among the oppressed nationalities. Here and there a number of fierce battles have already broken out. Throughout the country the oppressed peoples are girding themselves for the fight. A new upsurge of struggle against racism and national oppression is inevitable.

The Marxist-Leninist Party takes its stand shoulder to shoulder with the masses of the oppressed nationalities, and it fights with all its might against racism and all forms of national oppression. The Party is irreconcilably hostile to discrimination, segregation and racist terror. It opposes all prejudice and bigotry. The Party encourages active resistance to racist attacks and works to build up the mass actions of the people into a powerful anti-racist movement.

In this work, the Party pays attention to bringing out the class source of racism and national oppression. The MLP exposes the bourgeois lies, such as the idea that racism is inherent in human nature; it emphasizes that the fountain- head of racist and national oppression is the capitalist class and its state. The MLP works to direct the anti-racist struggles squarely against the capitalist rulers.

The MLP also rejects the opportunist concept that class analysis is not relevant to the mass movements of the oppressed nationalities. The class issues within the oppressed nationalities manifest themselves in various ways.

First, the vast majority of the oppressed nationality masses are workers. They are the most consistent and resolute fighters against national oppression, they form the backbone of the anti-racist movement, and they play an important role in the class struggle of the proletariat as a whole.

As well, there is an ever-deepening polarization between the oppressed nationality workers and the bourgeoisified upper strata of the oppressed nationalities. The upper strata within the oppressed nationalities sell out the mass struggle against racism in order to reach cozy accommodations with the ruling class at the expense of the workers of their own oppressed nationality. In the final analysis, it is impossible to develop the struggle against the racism of the ruling class without also opposing the treachery of the bourgeois of the oppressed nationalities.

Thus the recognition of the class divisions within the oppressed nationalities does not weaken, but strengthens, the overall struggle against national oppression. The Marxist- Leninist Party, as the party of the class conscious vanguard of the workers of all nationalities, holds that the class differentiation and class struggle within the oppressed nationalities should not be covered over but encouraged.

Thus, in building up the movement against racism, the MLP pays special attention to organizing the workers of the oppressed nationalities. It is by organizing the workers, and around them the other sections of the masses of the oppressed nationalities, that a firm struggle against racism can be consolidated and that the movement can be carried forward in a revolutionary direction.

At the same time, the MLP encourages the struggle against the sellout bourgeois elements within the oppressed nationalities. In this regard, it is important to fight narrow, bourgeois nationalism. Bourgeois nationalism is promoted by the bourgeois elements of the oppressed nationalities. It tries to claim that the oppressed nationality workers have common interests with the bourgeois of their nationality rather than with the rest of the workers. Thus bourgeois nationalism seeks to bind the oppressed nationality workers to the interests of the bourgeois of their own nationality and, through them, to the ruling class as a whole. It is a roadblock to the struggle against racism and national oppression.

The Marxist-Leninist Party also works steadfastly to organize the workers of every nationality into the fight against racism and national oppression. The Party counterposes proletarian internationalism to the racism of the bourgeoisie. The fight for the full equality and the liberation of the oppressed nationalities is an essential task of the entire working class. The workers support all democratic struggles of the oppressed in the interest of elementary justice. What is more, every real step forward in the anti-racist struggle weakens the strongholds of reaction, strengthens the hands of all the exploited and oppressed, and widens the field of the class struggle. The fight against national oppression is essential to break down the barriers of distrust and to unite the ranks of the working class for the revolutionary struggle against capitalism. What Karl Marx said of the United States in the last century still rings true today: "Labor in the white skin cannot emancipate itself as long as labor in the dark skin is branded."

The Marxist-Leninist Party stands for the development of the unity of the workers of all nationalities in a single front against exploitation, racism and all forms of oppression. The MLP stands for a single party for the entire working class of the U.S., a party that organizes the advanced workers of all nationalities. The working class must ensure that its class organizations embrace the workers of all nationalities.

Life has amply demonstrated that capitalism cannot bring emancipation for the oppressed nationalities. Only the overthrow of the racist capitalist rulers can usher in freedom for all the oppressed nationalities. The struggles against racism and national oppression are very important streams preparing the way for the proletarian socialist revolution.

The Fight Against the Oppression of the Black People

Today there are almost 30 million blacks in the U.S. The oppression of this people has been one of the basic foundations of capitalist rule in the U.S. Racism against the blacks is an entrenched feature of every variety of political reaction. The exploitation of cheap black labor is a source of great profits for the rich. As well, the promotion by the capitalists of the poison of racism against the blacks is a major instrument of the divide-and-rule tactics of the rich against the whole working class.

Every step forward for the black people has taken tremendous struggle. The4abolition of slavery was accomplished only through the Civil War. But formal slavery was soon replaced with the ruthless system of Jim Crow segregation and Klan terror. The worst features of the Jim Crow system were removed only after decades of hard struggle, especially the upsurge of the black people during the 50's and 60's. To gain even the smallest rights the black people had to face rabid terror and shed their blood. These struggles of the black people had a great liberating significance. They taught the masses confidence in the power of mass struggle. They allowed the black people to lift their heads up high.

However, the black people continue to face great oppression. Desperately poor in ordinary times anyway, today the black masses are being devastated by the economic crisis. They are suffering twice the national rate of unemployment, while joblessness among the black youth is over 50%. With a poverty rate at more than double that of the population as a whole, over 35% of all black families struggle to survive below the government's official poverty level.

Besides ever-deeper impoverishment, the black people also face the government's segregation drive and racist terror campaigns. Blacks continue to be shot at, lynched and beaten by policemen and racist gangs such as the KKK. The bourgeois courts allow the racist murderers to go scot-free or at the most give them light taps on the wrist.

There is a great anger building up among the black masses. This discontent can be seen in the rebellions in Miami of recent years, in fights against the Klan, in demonstrations against police murders, in the widespread hatred against Reagan, etc. However the struggle has yet to break out in force as happened in the 50's and 60's.

The ability of the black people to resist the racist offensive has been undermined by the treacherous role of the official leaders of the black community. These leaders include the black bourgeois politicians and the leaderships of such organizations as the NAACP, the Urban League, PUSH, etc. They are in reality misleaders of the black people, and they represent the interests of black bourgeois and those sections of the black petty-bourgeoisie which identify with the ambitions of the black bourgeoisie.

The black misleaders worked to sabotage the black people's struggles of the 1960's. Instead of supporting active resistance, they promoted passive methods of struggle. Instead of using the energy of the rebellions to organize the masses and to develop a more systematic and conscious struggle against racism, they denounced the militant rebellions of the masses. Instead of building the struggle relying on the strength of the masses, they worked to tie the masses to the Democratic Party of the racist ruling class.

Today the misleaders of the black people are wallowing in abject treachery against the black masses. They do not stand for fighting back against the racist offensive. When the black masses rebel, they come in as "riot stoppers.'' Instead of struggle, they work for cozy accommodations with the ruling class. They are working harder than ever to keep the black masses tied to the Democratic Party. Indeed their support for this party is one of the main factors allowing the Democrats to posture as the champion of the minorities.

In particular, the black misleaders seek to use the anger of the black masses as a springboard for the ambitions of the black bourgeoisie and those sections of the petty-bourgeoisie with the same aspirations. Under the slogan of working to increase the "clout'' of the black people, the black bourgeoisie seeks to use the black people's struggle to pressure for more token positions within the ruling class, such as in the higher levels of the government, in the capitalist parties, in the corporate boards, etc. They do not fight for the interests of the black working masses. Instead they echo the Reaganite "trickle-down'' ideologues by claiming that improving the positions of bourgeois blacks will ultimately translate into gains for all the black people.

The reformist policy of tokenism for a small handful of blacks has long been encouraged by the capitalist rulers of the U.S. In the 1960's, they stepped up this policy on realizing that the former bribed strata was too narrow and had too little influence on the masses. This was a bipartisan policy of the bourgeoisie. It was promoted through a variety of programs, such as the promotion of "black capitalism" by the Nixon administration. But while the black bourgeoisie is relatively well-off in comparison with the black workers, it is not as rich as the monopolists and it forms a very small section of the American bourgeoisie as a whole. At most, the black bourgeois are millionaires, while the white bourgeois include billionaires. As well, there is a much smaller proportion of the bourgeois among the black people than among the white population of the country. In brief, the black bourgeoisie has been given some crumbs and it has sold out but it has been kept out of the ruling, monopolist section of the U.S. capitalist class.

The advance of the struggle against the oppression of the black people requires a stern struggle against the misleaders who represent the interests of the black bourgeoisie. The black liberation struggle cannot have tokenism as its aim; instead it must seek to meet the interests of the vast numbers of working and poor blacks. This calls for struggle against the racist oppressors, not compromise with them. It calls for breaking with the path of reliance on the Democratic Party.

Against the Oppression of the Mexican Nationality

There are over ten million people of the Mexican nationality in the U.S. This includes both those who have been born in this country as well as recent immigrants from Mexico. They too suffer from vicious oppression by the American bourgeoisie. Gripped by grinding poverty, they are discriminated against and are targets of racist terror. Alongside other Spanish-speaking peoples, they are deprived of their language rights. And since this nationality includes large numbers of recent immigrants, they are constantly subject to harassment and persecution by the immigration authorities.

The roots of the oppression of the Mexican nationality are to be found in the annexation of what is now the southwest of the U.S. from Mexico in the last century and in the grinding poverty of the people of Mexico today due to the exploitation by the Mexican exploiters and the U.S. imperialists.

Expansionist American capitalism grabbed a big part of Mexico and brutally subjugated the local Mexican and native population. Originally peasants, the Mexican masses were robbed of their land and most eventually found themselves in the ranks of the U.S. working class. Today the Mexican nationality forms only a fraction of the population of the Southwest and a large part is spread out in other regions of the country. The issue today is not one of territory, but of fighting the savage oppression of a national minority.

As well, the Mexican capitalists and landlords and the U.S. imperialists terribly exploit and impoverish the masses in Mexico itself. As a result large numbers of workers and peasants are driven from their homeland to seek employment in the U.S. These masses of toilers have continually expanded the ranks of the Mexican nationality in the U.S. so that today it is the second largest oppressed nationality within the U.S. borders.

The Mexican nationality masses have been in the thick of many major battles against capitalist exploitation, national oppression and U.S. imperialism. Mexican nationality workers were a major force in numerous important workers' struggles in the 60's and 70's, such as the strikes of the farm workers and clothing workers. The Mexican nationality workers and youth also waged many battles against racist oppression and actively took part in the struggle against U.S. aggression in Viet Nam. They have always sympathized with the revolutionary movement in Mexico and the struggles of the toiling masses there.

Today too the masses of Mexican nationality are stirring into action. The Marxist-Leninist Party takes an active part in the struggles against the oppression of the Mexican nationality. The Party encourages the mass struggles to defend the undocumented immigrants and against police brutality. It works to strengthen the involvement of Mexican nationality people in the solidarity movements with the revolutionary struggles in Central America, in Mexico, and so forth. And the Party works to organize the Mexican nationality masses in the fights against unemployment, the Reaganite cutbacks, etc. In these and other struggles the MLP works to organize the masses and to bring the weight of the entire working class to bear against the special oppression of the Mexican nationality people.

No to the Oppression of the Puerto Ricans in the U.S.! Self-Determination for Puerto Rico!

The oppression of over two million Puerto Ricans in the U.S. is closely bound up with the continued colonial domination of Puerto Rico by U.S. imperialism.

U.S. imperialism has devastated the economy of that island colony. It has turned it into a military base for the U.S. war machine and into a haven of exploitation for the big corporations. Massive unemployment and poverty have given rise to wave upon wave of migration to the U.S., especially since the end of World War II. In the U.S., the Puerto Ricans have entered into the ranks of the working class. They are forced into the most backbreaking and low- wage jobs and subject to all sorts of racist indignities.

The Marxist-Leninist Party actively supports the struggle against the oppression of the Puerto Rican minority in the U.S. It also encourages their movement in solidarity with the revolutionary struggles in their homeland. The MLP holds that the Puerto Rican workers in the U.S. are part of the American working class and works to draw them into the revolutionary movement.

The Marxist-Leninist Party also supports the struggles of the working masses of Puerto Rico against U.S. imperialism. It supports the national liberation struggle of Puerto Rico and demands self-determination for this island colony.

Against the Oppression of the Native People

The Native people continue to suffer the consequences of the savage oppression that capitalism has imposed on them over the centuries. Despite the genocidal wars against them, the Native people continue to survive, although they number less than a million today. Packed into reservations and urban ghettos, the Native people are poverty- stricken and continue to be subject to discrimination and brutality. Their lands continue to be stolen from them by the greed of the big mining and other corporations. The federal government keeps a tight rein on the Native people. Today the Reagan administration is cutting back on its meager social programs, worsening the conditions of the Native people further. The Marxist-Leninist Party supports the just resistance of the Native people against racism and capitalist oppression.

In Defense of the Immigrant Workers

The capitalist rulers of the U.S. have always singled out various sections of immigrant workers for harassment, discrimination and persecution. In times past, Irish, Italian, Eastern European and other immigrants were subject to this sort of treatment. Today the brunt of the attacks falls on immigrants from the oppressed nations of Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.

It is the intolerable conditions imposed on the oppressed nations by imperialism and capitalism which force large numbers of foreign-born toilers to seek employment and refuge in the U.S. Once here, they join the ranks of the American working class. But capitalist rule forces them into a status of a specially oppressed section of the workers. Forced into the most backbreaking and low-wage jobs, the immigrants do not have any rights. Under the constant threat of harassment and deportation by the immigration authorities, the immigrant workers are prey to especially rapacious exploitation of the capitalists.

Those without documents, the so-called "illegal" immigrants, face the worst situation. The capitalists and their apologists are raising a big chauvinist hysteria over the question of the undocumented immigrants. Seeking to cover over the failures of the capitalist system, the capitalists and labor bureaucrats blame the undocumented immigrants for unemployment in the U.S. The capitalists, in reality, are not against exploiting the labor of the undocumented workers; they are only against giving them rights. The labor of the undocumented immigrants is very useful to the capitalists as a form of semi-slave labor. At the same time as they make fat profits from this labor, the capitalists organize systematic terror against the undocumented workers so that they cannot fight back against their brutal exploitation. Chauvinist hysteria against the undocumented is useful to reinforce this terror and to split the immigrant workers from the rest of the working class.

Over the years the capitalists have been making a great deal of noise about "immigration reform." Numerous plans have been put forward by the Democratic and Republican politicians, by both the Carter and Reagan administrations. But these plans are in fact a brutal attack on the immigrant workers and, indeed, on the entire working class. In the name of providing "amnesty" to a section of the undocumented immigrants, these plans seek to develop a special caste of workers with temporary residence status. This "amnesty" seeks to lure the undocumented to register with the government. But the conditions of this "amnesty" are so harsh that many of those who register would be targeted for deportation while only a small handful would get a status which would continue their exploitation as a sub-caste, but only worse since they would now be subject to official control and regulation. The "immigration reform" plans also propose to strengthen the police power of the immigration authorities generally and include plans to develop a national ID card. This would not only step up the persecution of immigrants but allow wider repression against militant workers and progressive activists generally.

Immigrants are also targeted for special attack for political reasons. The U.S. government comes down hard on immigrants who take part in the class struggle and revolutionary activity. In recent years, the government has launched special attacks on several sections of immigrants who have sought refuge in the U.S. from the oppression of tyrannical governments which are backed by U.S. imperialism.

Thousands of Salvadoran refugees have come to the U.S. seeking refuge because of the fascist repression of the U.S.- backed military regime there. The U.S. government refuses to give them asylum and sends them back to the tender mercies of the Salvadoran death squads. While the U.S. government welcomes with open arms all sorts of anticommunist refugees, it does not want the Salvadorans here since they are fleeing a U.S.-directed war in that country.

Refugees fleeing from Haiti have also suffered vicious persecution. That country too is run by a brutal pro-U.S. dictatorship which has imposed savage repression and horrible poverty on the masses. Thousands of Haitians have come seeking refuge in the U.S., crossing the seas in the most ramshackle of boats. But once here, they have faced deportation or been placed in concentration camps. Only by revolts against the concentration camps were the Haitian refugees able to put an end to their racist internment in these camps.

The immigrant communities in the U.S. have always been centers of organizing by political activists in support of the progressive and revolutionary movements in their homelands. This activity has an enlivening influence on the revolutionary movement in the U.S. and has been a sharp thorn in the side of both the U.S. government and various reactionary and fascist governments abroad. Various foreign intelligence services, working in collusion with the CIA and FBI, have carried out spying and attacks on progressive activists residing in the U.S. Many Palestinian, Iranian, and other foreign students have been harassed and deported for their support of the revolutionary movements in their homelands. In recent years, the U.S. government, working with the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, has been seeking to "reform" its extradition laws in such a way that would allow the tyrant Marcos to bring back political opponents from the U.S. for persecution and murder at home. If passed, this plan would facilitate the hands of numerous tyrants to bring back political opponents to face the torturers and executioners at home.

The Marxist-Leninist Party opposes all attacks and persecution of the immigrant workers. It stands for full equality and rights for all immigrants, documented or undocumented. The oppression of a sub-caste of immigrant workers is an attack on all the workers. The MLP urges all the workers to come to the aid of their fellow immigrant workers.

The Marxist-Leninist Party considers the immigrant workers as part of the American working class. Thus it encourages the immigrant workers to join in the class struggle and revolutionary work against the U.S. capitalist rulers.

Since the immigrant workers face not just exploitation as wage slaves but also special oppression, the Marxist- Leninist Party supports the immigrant working masses in fighting back against discrimination, persecution and racist attacks. It encourages all workers to defend the immigrants.

Also, since the immigrant workers have close ties and deep interest in the revolutionary movements in their homelands, the Marxist-Leninist Party encourages and supports revolutionary work in support of these struggles.

The Marxist-Leninist Party holds that there can only be a single vanguard for the working class of each country. The MLP is the party of the class conscious workers of all nationalities, foreign or native born, immigrant or citizen.

The principle of one party for the U.S. working class does not, however, mean that parties of other countries may not have certain organizations in this country. The principle is upheld if a distinction is made between the work of organizing the immigrant communities, work that is part of the American revolutionary movement, and hence should be directed by the MLP, and the work that is a part of the revolutionary work in the homeland. The MLP extends its hand of fraternal proletarian internationalist cooperation to such overseas party organizations of other parties.

[Photo: Five thousand people demonstrate in Buffalo on January 15, 1981 against nazi thugs and against the racist terror campaign in Buffalo. The MLP targeted the government as the organizer of growing fascism and exposed the treacherous role of the Democratic Party liberals.]

[Photo: Party supporters march in a demonstration of 1,500 in Brooklyn on January 21,1982, against the persecution of Haitian refugees.]

E. The Struggle Against the Oppression of Women

The vast majority of women in the U.S. are in the ranks of the working people. This includes working women, housewives of workers, and unemployed heads of households. They suffer a double oppression under capitalism; they are oppressed not just because of their class position but also because of their sex.

Women under capitalist rule in the U.S. face conditions of low pay, high unemployment, job discrimination and various laws discriminating against them. Capitalism oppresses them also with its reactionary culture and ideology which are permeated with male supremacy, brutality and every sort of exploitative attitude towards women. As well, under capitalism, women continue to suffer the crushing burden of household drudgery, petty work which is nerve- wracking and stultifying to the extreme.

The women of oppressed nationalities face all of these terrible conditions and worse. They bear a triple burden of class exploitation, oppression as women, and national oppression as well.

Today the conditions of women are getting worse as a result of the capitalist offensive.

The economic crisis has hit women especially hard. Today the average employed woman makes only 60% of male income, down from 65% in 1975. The capitalist principle of "last hired, first fired" has thrown large numbers of women into the ranks of the unemployed. Since women workers are heavily concentrated in low-wage, unorganized industries, they have been hit hard by the frozen minimum wage, wage cuts, worsening speedup and unhealthy working conditions. In recent years the capitalists have also stepped up their use of "homework," which pays much lower wages than work in the factory or office and on top of that keeps women isolated by keeping them away from the socialized environment of the work place.

The Reagan administration is carrying out a vicious drive to intensify the oppression of women. Women have been hit particularly hard by the cutbacks in social programs, such as food stamps and welfare, since women form a very large section of the poverty-stricken and need these benefits to survive. Cutbacks in the meager subsidies for day-care programs have made things worse for working mothers. The Reaganites are also stepping up job discrimination against women under the hoax of opposing "reverse discrimination."

The cultural oppression of women is also intensifying. All manner of anti-women attitudes are being cultivated as the bourgeoisie tries to strengthen its exploitation of women and works to divide men from women in the ranks of the working people.

The Reaganites are also spearheading a reactionary crusade against women on a variety of social questions through the Moral Majority and other ultra-reactionary outfits. For years they have been grooming a reactionary women's movement under the leadership of such elements as Phyllis Schlafly.

This reactionary crusade seeks to deprive women of all rights. On the basis of the reactionary ideology that women are allegedly weak and 4ail, the Reaganite reactionaries advocate that women should submit with a smile to their inferior place in life. They are also standard-bearers of the reactionary idea that "women's place is in the home." With these ideas, they try to claim that the oppression of women is really a sign of the great respect the capitalists have for them. The reactionaries^ do not actually intend to have women return to the home, although the slogan does serve to prettify layoffs of women. The capitalists in fact have no intention of stopping hiring women; the cheap labor of women workers is much too profitable for them. But the ideology of "women's place is in the home" is useful to justify paying women lower wages, to justify job discrimination, to argue for the abolition of all rights to abortions, to ridicule women's demands, to humiliate them, to split them from male workers, and to oppose women's participation in the strike movement, other mass movements and any sort of revolutionary activity.

With their promotion of the idea that "women's place is in the home," the aristocratic ladies of Reaganite reaction show their complete detachment from the masses of women. Today over 50% of women over 16 are in the work force. With inflation and the cutting of wages, more and more families need two incomes to survive. Large numbers of women have always had to work in order to make a living. And it is not at all a bad thing for women to take part in productive labor instead of being restricted to household drudgery. The bad thing that women face in working in this society is the merciless capitalist exploitation. It is this which converts the work place into a daily hell and which prevents the woman from securing the proper arrangements concerning the home and children to allow her to go to work without being totally exhausted. Despite the pain and misery involved, women's participation in productive labor helps prepare the way for their liberation. By drawing women out of the home into an environment of productive social labor, it helps to broaden their horizons and facilitates their participation in the progressive and revolutionary movements.

The Marxist-Leninist Party is firmly opposed to the oppression of women. It is opposed to all forms of discrimination, harassment and degradation of women. The MLP supports the fight for equal pay for equal work. It stands by the struggle for adequate protection for the special interests of female labor in the work place. The Marxist-Leninist Party supports the struggle of women for social and economic equality. It holds that the fight against the oppression of women is not just the task of women alone but of the entire working class.

Under capitalism, if women are not to be completely crushed, the struggle for improvement of their conditions is essential. But capitalism cannot bring emancipation for women. It can at the most provide formal equality, although even this does not fully exist in the U.S. yet. Under capitalism, rights for women, like all democratic rights, remain conditional, restricted and above all, difficult to realize in fact. The emancipation of women requires not just formal rights but also their full participation in production and all political and economic aspects of the life of the country. It also requires the liberation of women from domestic slavery. This calls for the socialization of the major burdens of housework. Only a socialist society can bring all this about. Hence the interests of women in the fight against their oppression lie completely with the revolutionary movement of the working class for socialism.

Throughout the history of the U.S., women have been active in all fronts of struggle against capitalist rule. They have been vigorous participants in the strike movement, in struggles against racism and national oppression, in the fight against imperialist war, etc. Today too women are in the thick of the mass struggles on different fronts. This is despite the fact that under capitalism, the inequality facing women places a lot of obstacles in the path of women taking part in political activity.

There can be no real mass movement without the participation of women. For success of the socialist revolution, it is essential to bring into motion vast masses of working class women. The Marxist-Leninist Party stands for the active mobilization of women into the workers' movement and all the fronts of the struggle against capitalism. It stands for rallying revolutionary women to take their place in the class conscious vanguard of the proletariat.

It is essential to combat the influence of bourgeois feminism. Bourgeois feminism holds that all women, rich and poor alike, have common interests. But in fact bourgeois feminism serves only to attract women to the side of the capitalists. Although the bourgeois feminists claim to speak in the name of women as a whole, and sometimes give lip service to the concerns of poor and working women, they in fact subordinate everything to the interests of women of the upper classes. They lavish attention on businesswomen and professionals while doing nothing to organize the vast masses of women locked into low-wage jobs and poverty. The bourgeois feminists seek to use the anger of women against their inequality in order to work for strengthening the positions of rich women in the ruling class. Thus, their idea of women's emancipation is more women in the capitalist boardrooms, in the capitalist political parties, in the higher echelons of the government, etc. The bourgeois women want to have their share in ruling over society as big capitalists, bureaucrats and reactionary politicians themselves.

The bourgeois feminists are avid champions of reformism. They claim the path forward against women's oppression is not through struggle but through electing and relying on the capitalist politicians. They are among the biggest boosters of the Democratic Party. This is a further example of the connection between bourgeois feminism and the interests of the capitalists.

And while the bourgeois feminists hobnob with the wealthy capitalists who are at the core of the oppression of women, at the same time they promote a dangerous divisive influence in the ranks of the working masses. With their theories of "men being the source of women's oppression,'' they seek to whitewash capitalism and divide the working class movement. They promote exclusionism for women and oppose women fighting for social and economic equality through participation in the revolutionary workers' movement.

Despite all their talk of the common concerns of all women, it is inevitable that bourgeois feminism, a bourgeois ideology, will clash with the interests of poor and working class women. For it is impossible to support both the capitalists and the workers. Those whose mouths water at the sight of the privileges of the executives and big politicians must oppose the revolutionary movement of the working masses, including the struggles on behalf of the vast masses of women.

The pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist essence of bourgeois feminism was strikingly revealed in recent years on the question of the militarization of women. In 1980, when Carter proposed the registration of both young men and women for the draft, the bourgeois feminists enthusiastically came out in favor of drafting women into the army.

The bourgeois feminists prettified this proposal in the most outlandish terms as a great way towards equality and liberation for women. What complete nonsense. The fight for equality for women is not a struggle for women to be equally oppressed in all spheres of life by the capitalists. It cannot be to demand equal rights to serve as cannon fodder for the rich by being conscripted into the imperialist army.

At the bottom of the concern of the bourgeois feminists, however, was not the issue of rights for women at all; it was the concern to ensure a strong aggressive army for U.S. imperialism. Some bourgeois feminists openly said so, admonishing women that if they demand equal rights then they must take up equal responsibility for the "national defense'' of U.S. imperialism. Others tried to hide behind phrases about being opposed to the draft, but added that since the draft was inevitable, then the interests of fairness and equality demanded that women must be conscripted too. All the bourgeois feminists evaded the question of what sort of army it is that the women were to be drafted into.

This exposure was a graphic example of the isolation of bourgeois feminism from the concerns of the vast masses of women in the ranks of the working people. There was a widespread outrage among women against the proposal to draft women. Instead of utilizing this outrage to organize the masses of women against militarism and imperialist war, the bourgeois feminists sought to help the capitalists out by selling their plan to the masses of women. In short, they revealed themselves to be Pentagon-feminists.

The Marxist-Leninist Party stands opposed to the militarization of women, because it is opposed to the imperialist army and all efforts to strengthen it. This stand is not based on any idea that women are weak. Quite the opposite. The MLP believes in the full mobilization of women into the ranks of the revolutionary movement. Women in all parts of the world have long been participants in strikes, revolts and popular wars. It is the fight against exploitation and oppression which requires strength of character and shows determination and resolve.

While the MLP opposes the militarization of women, at the same time it is not afraid of it. Should women be conscripted, this will only bring women into further struggle against the capitalists, both inside and outside the military. It is only participation in the revolutionary struggle through which women will find the way towards genuine equality and liberation.

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III. ORGANIZE THE PROLETARIAT, BUILD THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY

A. The History of the Fight to Build the Political Party of the Working Class

For the working class to successfully organize the class struggle, for it to defend its class interests from the offensive of the capitalists and bring this struggle to the point where it breaks the chains of wage slavery, the workers must build up their own Marxist-Leninist vanguard party, a party of revolutionary struggle and socialism.

The class struggle finds its highest and clearest expression in the struggle between parties. All classes form their own political parties.

The capitalist class has built up two main parties, the Democrats and Republicans. Through these parties the capitalists exercise their political rule, defending their exploitative class interests and directing the instruments of the repressive state machinery to suppress the struggles of the working masses.

To fight against the capitalists, the working class too is compelled to build up its own distinct party, a party which is independent from and opposed to the parties of the ruling class. The history of the U.S. workers' movement shows that every major historical advance of the working class has required both the mass upsurge and the work of the Marxists in the building of independent proletarian organization. The history of the U.S. workers' movement is, in the final analysis, the history of the struggle of the workers to break free from the influence of the capitalist parties and to establish and build up their own working class party.

Early History: 1790's-1850's

The workers' movement in the U.S. can be traced back to the 1790's when strikes began to break out and the first trade unions arose. By the late 1820's the small local unions began to combine into city centrals in order to gain mutual support for their separate struggles and to advance their common demands such as for the 10-hour day.

No sooner had this step been taken than the workers also turned to independent political action. They addressed their demands to the capitalist government, they put up their own candidates in city elections, and they created local Workingmen's Parties to represent them. Within a few years 15 such state and local labor parties were formed and some 50 workers' newspapers were begun.

But in these years and up into the 1860's the workers' organizations remained weakly formed and led a tenuous existence. They were made up almost exclusively of skilled workers and handicraftsmen whose narrow craft concerns frequently led to competition and the breaking of solidarity. Moreover, they were under constant attack from the capitalists. With each new capitalist economic crisis the organizations were almost universally crushed until another upswing in the economy brought renewed attempts to organize.

As well, the conceptions of these organizations were quite confused. By instinct the workers had begun to organize and to wage a fight against the capitalists. But as yet they had no clear idea of the class struggle nor any idea of the real aims of their movement. It fell to the Marxist socialists to bring clarity into the movement.

With the formation of the Proletarian League in 1852 and later the New York Communist Club, Marxism was introduced into the U.S. workers' movement. The American Marxists, led by Joseph Weydemeyer and F. A. Sorge, close friends and disciples of Marx and Engels, explained to the workers the class struggle and the socialist aim of the movement. Their dissemination of Marxism was so widespread that many trade unions eventually adopted various of the principles of the Communist Manifesto in their preambles. They worked to build the unions, to unite the immigrant and native workers, and to mobilize the workers for struggle against slavery. With the outbreak of the Civil War, their work resulted in the large-scale mobilization of the German-American workers, then a key section of the working class, to join the war against slavery, and they contributed to the mobilization of the workers of all nationalities for this essential struggle.

1860-1900

The abolition of slavery through the civil war and the rapid development of capitalism which followed gave new impetus to the workers' movement. The number of industrial workers grew by leaps and bounds. For the first time these unskilled and semi-skilled workers entered the movement on a large scale.

By the late 1860's unions were popping up across the country and serious strikes began to be fought. With the economic crisis beginning in 1873, the capitalists launched another offensive against the workers' wages. But the workers replied with a wave of strikes that brought tens upon tens of thousands of workers into action. In 1877 the first industry-wide strike broke out. The railway workers spread their strike to city after city, taking virtual control of St. Louis and other areas for weeks. The state militias could not control the strikers and, for the first time, federal troops were unleashed against a strike. It was only by bloody murder and jailings that the railway strike was finally crushed.

In the mid-1880's another strike wave burst out and the eight-hour day movement swept the country like a prairie fire. In 1886 some 340,000 workers participated in the strikes for the eight-hour day and some 200,000 won their demands. During this period the national unions spread, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was formed federating a number of these unions, and the first attempts emerged to build industrial unions, such as the Knights of Labor, which brought together the unskilled and skilled. The massive strike movement continued into the 1890's.

For the first time the workers nationwide began to sense their community of grievances and interests, to feel their solidarity as a distinct class throughout the country in opposition to the capitalists. And this class instinct quickly led them to take political action. In city after city local workers' parties sprang up, workers' candidates were fielded in elections, and the influence of the socialist movement spread widely.

The International Workingmen's Association, led by Marx and Engels, formed its first section in the U.S. in 1869. It quickly spread to many cities. It was especially influential in the workers' movement in New York and led the unemployed movement.

After the dissolution of the IWA in 1876, the Socialist Labor Party was formed. It immediately took an active part in the 1877 railway workers' strike and was especially influential among the St. Louis strikers. It actively worked for the creation of a national union to organize together the skilled and unskilled workers, it supported workers' candidates and eventually ran its own candidates in elections, and it strove to develop the socialist consciousness of the workers. However, its influence did not extend much beyond the foreign-born workers and it suffered from a series 6f reformist and sectarian weaknesses.

Besides the SLP, other socialist organizations also sprang up during this period and the socialist movement became a power in the workers' movement throughout the country.

1900-1920

The emergence of this independent political movement marked an important advance for the working class. But it was only a first step. The initial impulse to independent action had to be consolidated. For a real break from the influence of the capitalist parties, for the working class to become a force consistently standing in its own class interests, the class conscious, socialist workers had to be united into a party firmly based on the revolutionary principles of Marxism. This step proved particularly difficult. For decades a struggle raged in the workers' movement to establish such party, a party of revolutionary struggle and socialism.

The soldout bureaucrats of the AFL worked to drag the movement backwards. They spurned the unskilled industrial workers, frequently sabotaged the workers' strikes and preached political non-partisanism to oppose the workers' effort to build their,: own political party. With their fraudulent theories of "trade unionism pure and simple'' and "trade union neutrality'' the AFL hacks tried to bar the workers from the political field and to school them in non-partisanism. These theories were directed principally against the socialists, in an effort to head off their growing influence in the unions, and were but a thin disguise for keeping the workers subordinated to the domination of the capitalist political parties.

In reaction to the AFL hacks, anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist organizations, such as the Industrial Workers of the World, sprang up. But despite the revolutionary energy that these organizations represented, they preached opposition to the party concept and to independent political action of the workers and became an obstacle to the revolutionary organization of the working class.

The movement also suffered from social-democratic reformism. In 1900, the vast majority of the members of the SLP united with other socialists to form the Socialist Party. The SP grew rapidly reaching nearly 120,000 members and eventually polling a million votes in the presidential elections. The building of the SP marked a step forward for the workers' movement. But it was dominated by a well- entrenched right wing which rode roughshod over the revolutionary party members. This right wing reduced independent political action to nothing more than running in elections. And instead of a fight against the capitalists, it stood for petty tinkering to patch up the capitalist system. The right and center of the SP were nothing more than mere social-democratic politicians, who painted up the exploitative program of the liberal capitalists in "socialist colors.''

The left wing of the SP was crystallized in the course of bitter clashes against the right opportunism of the SP leaders, and it sought to find a revolutionary path. This struggle became quite intense during World War I and came to a head following the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917. The left wing fought tenaciously for a militant stand against the imperialist war. It demanded a break with the social-democratic Second International, which took the social-chauvinist stand of allowing each party to support their "own" bourgeoisie in the inter-imperialist bloodletting. The left wing also vigorously supported the working class revolution in Russia and sought to organize a fight against the U.S. imperialist intervention against the Russian revolution. As well, the left wing took an active part in the important battles of the U.S. workers, such as the Seattle general strike in 1919, and it strove to convert the SP into a party of action.

In 1919 the left wing won the majority in the elections to the SP national offices. But the right and center leaders refused to give up their positions. Instead they abrogated the elections, expelled many entire branches of the SP where the left wing had the most influence, and, at the convention in August they called out the police to remove by force the left-wing delegates. In this situation the left wing broke with the SP. Initially, because of minor tactical differences, two communist parties were set up. But in May, 1921 these were united into the single Communist Party.

An essential element in the forging of the new Communist Party (CPUSA) was the revolutionary teachings of Leninism. The Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia shook the entire capitalist world. The working class not only seized power but, for the first time, was able to maintain itself in power and form a durable dictatorship of the proletariat. This greatly inspired the American workers and brought the ideas of Lenin, the great leader of the Russian workers, to the United States. Leninism taught the revolutionary workers how to build the party of a new type. Not a party submerged solely in electioneering, but a party of action to lead the workers into every front of struggle. Not a party subordinated to the dictates of right and center factions, but a monolithic party united on its revolutionary line. Not a party held in check to the whims of the bourgeoisie, but a party that combined illegal with legal work to ensure it could carry out its revolutionary activity under even the most repressive conditions. The left wing of the SP, and other advanced sections of the U.S. working class, took to heart the teachings of Leninism and boldly marched down the road of building the Marxist-Leninist vanguard party of the working class.

The CPUSAs 1920's-1930's

Throughout World War I the workers waged many hard fought strikes. Afterwards, and in 1919, a strike wave, the size of which had never been seen before, swept the country. The capitalists responded to the workers' struggle with brutal terror. Beginning especially with the first great steel strike at the end of 1919, the capitalists launched an all-out offensive to cut wages, to speed up production, and most of all to break the workers' organizations. Up through 1923 workers in steel, textile, the railroads, and many other industries fought heroically. In the steel strike of 1919-1920 alone, 25 strikers were killed. But in the main their strikes were defeated and their organizations were broken.

The capitalists feared most of all the Communist Party; they sought to crush the Party from the beginning. No sooner had the communists broken with the SP than their offices were raided and a number of leaders jailed. In November, 1919 the police raided rallies in support of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and arrested hundreds of communists. In January, 1920 Attorney General Mitchell Palmer dispatched troops to raid the homes of communists in 70 cities simultaneously. In all, some 10,000 communists were arrested, over 500 were deported, and a number of the Party leaders were given heavy sentences in prison. The vicious terror against the communists was continued into 1922, when the CP's secret convention in Bridgman, Michigan was raided and nearly 50 delegates were arrested.

The savage attacks on the newborn CP seriously disrupted its organization and forced tens of thousands to give up their membership in the Party. But the CP reorganized underground and also unfolded open, legal work. Through this combination of illegal and legal organization it was able to gain influence among the workers and to win over the most class conscious and resolute fighters of the working class. Thousands of workers from the IWW, including many of its prominent leaders, broke with anarcho-syndicalism and joined the CP. The leaders of the Syndicalist League, who in 1922 formed the Trade Union Education League (TUEL) and who were active in the strikes of the steel workers, the coal miners and others, also joined the CP, and the TUEL came under the Party's leadership. As well, a number of prominent black revolutionaries who had worked with the newspaper The Messenger also joined the Party. Thus despite the repression, the CP was able to consolidate the most advanced section of the working class and to begin to organize the masses of workers.

Through much of the 1920's and early 1930's, the workers' movement ebbed. In the early 1920's, the workers' organizations had been greatly weakened or crushed outright. As well, through much of the 1920's, the capitalist system achieved a partial and temporary stabilization. Although there was high unemployment in the U.S. and many industries remained stagnant, there was no general economic crisis in this period and the bourgeoisie sang hymns to "prosperity." Nevertheless, the CP, despite the ebb in the workers' movement, was able to carry out steady revolutionary work. Step by step its influence grew among the workers.

The stock market crash in 1929 signalled the onset of the devastating depression that descended like a plague on the U.S. and the entire capitalist world. In 1933, after several years of the miseries and horrors of depression, the mass struggle of the workers began to expand dramatically and the mass upsurge burst out. Thus arrived the period of tumultuous struggle against the capitalists that marked the rest of the 1930's. Through its bold and spirited work, and starting from the organization it had achieved through the steadfast work of the previous period, the CP thrust itself into the center of the powerful mass upsurge of the 1930's.

The work of the CP in the 1920's and most of the 1930's showed the tremendous advance that communism represented over the former working class parties. On every front of work, the difference was apparent.

The CP carried out widespread revolutionary agitation on all of the most important events of the day. It organized repeated campaigns in defense of the then-socialist Soviet Union, and it sought to teach the workers everywhere the socialist goal of their movement.

The CP vigorously fought against the AFL bureaucrats in the old unions, and it led the movement to amalgamate the trade unions into industrial unions. It also worked energetically for the organization of the unorganized workers. It is notable that the CP began the first really serious organizing drives in the South. It also led a number of important strikes in the coal fields, the textile industry and elsewhere.

The CP's influence grew so strong that the AFL bureaucrats launched a campaign to expel all leftists from the unions. The CP vigorously fought the expulsion drive and continued its battle for a class struggle policy in the old AFL unions. At the same time, by 1928, the CP began organizing red trade unions out of the expelled unionists and from its drives to organize the unorganized. Through this combined fight to win over the rank-and-file workers in the old unions and to directly organize the workers in new, fighting, industrial unions, the influence of the CP continued to grow. In 1933, the strikes initiated by the CP in the auto industry, the steel mills, the coal fields, the textile mills and elsewhere opened up the massive strike wave and industrial organizing drives which continued through the tumultuous 30's.

Besides the work among the employed, the CP worked persistently to organize the unemployed. Early in the 1920's it began to agitate for relief for the unemployed. By the late 20's it had begun to organize unemployed councils. With the onset of the Great Depression and the rapid growth in the army of the unemployed, the CP called the workers into great mass actions. On March 6, 1930, the CP, and the mass organizations under its influence, called for unemployment demonstrations in industrial centers across the country. All told, 1,250,000 workers came out to demonstrate and, in a number of cases, fought battles with the police who tried to suppress them. With these demonstrations, the unemployed movement caught fire in a big way. During much of the 1930's the unemployed, united with the employed workers, fought vigorous battles against evictions, for a moratorium on debts, etc., and for local and national programs of relief for the unemployed.

The CP also took up the fight for the liberation of the black people.

It fought tenaciously against the segregation of the trade unions, directly organized the black workers into the new unions it built, and strove everywhere to unite the black and white workers in the common battle against the capitalists. It also organized black tenant farmers in the South into a sharecroppers union. At the same time it mounted major campaigns against job discrimination, against Jim Crow segregation and against lynchings. The CP vigorously defended the Scottsboro youths who, in a typical case of Jim Crow oppression carried out in an atmosphere of racist hysteria, had been framed for the alleged rape of two white girls. The Scottsboro case became a rallying point for the struggle against Jim Crow, and the CP's work won it wide support among the black people. In these and many other struggles the CP proved itself to be the most ardent champion of the rights of the black people.

The CP also consistently worked to organize the workers against the bloody aggressions of U.S. imperialism, against colonialism and against the imperialist war drive.

The CP frequently organized joint campaigns with the communist parties in Latin America to train the workers in international solidarity against the common U.S. imperialist enemy. It also ardently organized support for the Nicaraguan revolution, led by Sandino, for the struggle of the Filipino people against U.S. colonialism, and in support of the Chinese people's revolution. Similarly it supported the peoples of Cuba, of Puerto Rico, and of many other countries around the world who were fighting against U.S. imperialist domination. The CP was a loyal contingent of the Communist International and it worked wholeheartedly to train the American workers in proletarian internationalism.

Through all of the above and other fronts of agitation and struggle, the CP sought to awaken the workers and organize them as a class. In the CP the workers found their true vanguard, a Marxist-Leninist party, a party of revolutionary struggle and socialism.

Browderite Revisionism Destroys the CP -- Mid-1930's-1950's

With the onset of the Great Depression the capitalists tried to crush the workers' movement with brutal terror. But confronted with a rising wave of strikes and other mass struggle, the liberal capitalist also began to maneuver, to grant piddling concessions to the workers while promising them major reforms. This was the program adopted by the Democratic Party government of Roosevelt after his first few years in office. Roosevelt combined a continuing brutal suppression of workers' struggles with a reform-promising program aimed at bringing the workers' struggle under control, at heading off a workers' revolution, and at saving the crisis-ridden capitalist system.

The union bureaucrats, both the crusty old hacks of the AFL and the reformist hacks who formed the CIO in 1936, as well as the SP leaders and other opportunists, jumped onto the Rooseveltian bandwagon. The Democratic Party, notorious as the party of the slavocracy, was painted up as the party of "labor and the minorities.'' Under Roosevelt a coalition was formed of the liberal capitalists and the labor bureaucrats, and this liberal-labor coalition became the key instrument to block the independent strivings of the workers and to bring them back under the domination of the capitalist political parties.

Initially the CP waged a vigorous struggle against Roosevelt. But beginning in the mid-1930's, under the leadership of Earl Browder, the Party began to tone down it? fight against Roosevelt and the union bureaucrats. It eventually gave up any independent stand and took the line that the workers should simply be a pressure group to force the monopoly capitalist government of Roosevelt to withstand the pressure of the monopolists by providing voting support for the Roosevelt program.

Browder developed his revisionism and corroded the revolutionary line of the Party under the signboard of gaining greater numbers and through distorting the Marxist-Leninist tactics of the united front. Beginning in the mid-1930's Browder liquidated first the independent, revolutionary mass organizations and then the Party organizations for the sake of a cozy accommodation with the top union bureaucrats, the social-democrats, and the liberal-labor politicians generally. Thus, for example, in 1935 the red trade unions were disbanded on a capitulationist basis in the name of "trade union unity'' with the AFL bureaucrats. Similarly, the League of Struggle for Negro Rights was liquidated in 1936 for the sake of a "broad united front of all democratic strata'' including "Republicans, Democrats, socialists, businessmen,'' etc. Later on the Party's trade union fractions and shop newspapers were liquidated in order to "prove'' to the CIO bureaucrats that the CP really stood for "unity'' and would do nothing to organize the rank and file against the treachery of the union misleaders.

At the same time, Browder defined and redefined the united front on a "broader and broader'' basis, including in it first a section of the labor bureaucracy and the "left'' wing of the Democratic Party. Finally, he included the whole labor bureaucracy, the liberals of both the Democratic and Republican Parties, and he even outstretched his hand to the National Association of Manufacturers and to J. P. Morgan himself.

Browder's liquidationist stands reached their zenith in 1944 when he liquidated the CP completely. He replaced the CP with the "Communist Political Association" which he emphasized was a "nonpartisan association" which would play a mere "educational" role. Browder justified this destruction of the proletarian vanguard party on the disgusting class collaborationist grounds that it was necessary to "prove" to the capitalists that the communists wanted "national unity" above all else. In his infamous book Teheran, Browder claimed that U.S. imperialism "retains some of the characteristics of a young" and "progressive" capitalism. And he set out the program that "we Marxists...are accepting for a long period the necessity to cooperate in making capitalism work in America for the benefit of our people and the world." Thus, although U.S. imperialism was coming out of World War II as the biggest and most bloodthirsty imperialist aggressor and was already launching its offensive against the U.S. workers, Browder claimed that "national unity" with the "men of vision" among the "big capitalists" would provide a "democratic peace," "benefits" to the oppressed peoples of other countries, and "higher wages" for the U.S. workers.

Within a year, by 1945, Browder's most extreme liquidationist positions were criticized, the CP was reconstituted, and Browder was expelled. But the essence of Browder's line was never really repudiated. For example, initially Browder was criticized for extending his hand to the NAM and Morgan, but only on the grounds that this weakened "national unity" behind the capitalist program of Roosevelt. Later Browder was criticized for having been too "subservient" to Roosevelt, but it was still regarded as a crushing reproach to the Democratic Party to say that it was not living up to the Roosevelt heritage.

Thus the CP was unable to break out of the orbit of liberal-labor politics. When Khrushchovite revisionism arose in the mid-1950's, the CP quickly fell under its spell. It continued to degenerate and it has come down to today as nothing more than a "left''-wing booster of the Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracy.

1960-1980

With the revisionist degeneration of the CPUS A the workers' movement found itself in difficult straits. Under sharp attack from the capitalist exploiters and without its revolutionary vanguard, the workers' movement fell prey to the Democratic Party and its social-democratic and reformist "left" wing. For decades the burning issue before the workers' movement, the only way to break the curse of class collaborationism, was the reconstitution of a genuine communist party.

Many proletarians fought against the revisionist betrayal. They looked to Marxism-Leninism for the answer. But the legacy of revisionism and of decades of liberal- labor politics is such that there is no direct continuity between the Marxist-Leninists of today and the revolutionary CPUSA of the past.

It was in this situation that the great mass movements of the 1960's and early 1970's broke out. The movement of the black people grew to a nationwide rebellion; the movement against U.S. aggression in Indochina swept the country in a mighty torrent; the youth and student-s rose up in these struggles and also fought against reactionary indoctrination in the schools and imperialist culture; and the strike movement of the workers became intense with many widespread wildcats, rebellions from the union bureaucracy, and a new impulse to independent organization.

Out of these mass movements the advanced section of revolutionary activists rose up to fight against revisionism and the entire liberal-labor swamp, to assert anew the Marxist-Leninist traditions and principles, and to shoulder the great task of reconstituting the genuine communist party as the conscious leader and organizer of the working class.

A decisive step forward was taken in May 1969. The historic nucleus of the party came into being with the founding of the American Communist Workers' Movement (Marxist-Leninist). The ACWM(M-L) worked actively to unite the Marxist-Leninists into a single nationwide Marxist-Leninist center. It widely disseminated the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and consistently opposed the pervasive ideological confusion spread by the bourgeoisie; it fought against New Leftism, Castroism, cultural nationalism, trotskyism, anarchism, revisionism and social-democracy. It conducted widespread revolutionary agitation in the midst of the mass movements. It waged the resistance movement against the political repression of the capitalist state. And it built up a disciplined fighting organization with monolithic unity based on the single Marxist-Leninist line.

In all of these ways the ACWM(M-L) defended the purity of Marxism-Leninism by applying it in practice to advance the revolutionary movement. The struggle for the party further deepened with the campaign around the "Call for a Conference of North American Marxist-Leninists," a campaign that did tremendous work to propagate the necessity for the party and that led to the founding of the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists in 1973.

But the work for the Party only advanced through a fierce struggle against the anti-party trend of neo-revisionism. Through their declarations that they too stood for communism and opposed revisionism, the neo-revisionists gained the trust of many activists. However, neo-revisionism represented, in essence, a merger of the anti-party and opportunist theories of Maoist revisionism with the corrupt liberal-labor traditions of Browderism. For a decade neo-revisionism disrupted the work to reconstitute a genuinely communist party of the proletariat. The neo-revisionists factionalized and scattered the Marxist-Leninist movement. The ACWM(M-L) and then the COUSML fought persistently to rally the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists for the party and against the anti-party and opportunist ideas of neo-revisionism.

Beginning in 1976, the neo-revisionists degenerated into open social-chauvinism. Their diehard adherence to the counter-revolutionary "three worlds" theory, their Pentagon-socialist thesis of "Striking the main blow at Soviet social-imperialism," and their defense of various U.S. imperialist actions brought out into the open the behind- the-scenes alliance with the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie that neo-revisionism always represented. A movement against social-chauvinism emerged, expressing the anger and indignation of all those who preserved their revolutionary honor. Led by the COUSML, this struggle enlivened the Marxist-Leninist movement, brought up a further section of class conscious workers to the cause of the Party, and spurred on the work in defense of socialism. It was indispensable in clearing the way for the founding of the Party. On January 1, 1980, the decade-long struggle for the Party was crowned with success. The Marxist-Leninist Party was born.

Today, once again, the working class has its own political party. The MLP is the communist party of the U.S. working class. It is the party of the socialist revolution, the party of the class struggle, the party that carries forward the revolutionary banner of the U.S. communist movement of the past. The MLP is composed of class conscious workers and other revolutionary elements who take up the class stand and historical mission of the working class. It has no interests separate and apart from those of the working class as a whole. It joins up with the workers' movement, brings light into that movement, and works to advance the historic struggle that the workers themselves have already begun.

[Photo: The CPUSA led the toiling masses in countless battles against the capitalists in the 1920's and 30's. Here workers raise a banner against hunger, war and fascism in a May Day demonstration in the early 30's.]

B. On Party-Building

The victory of the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party in 1980 did not mark the end of the struggle for the Party, but a new beginning. It opened up a new period of struggle on yet a broader scale to rally the class conscious workers and other revolutionary activists to the red banner of the Party, to imbue the broad masses of the workers with the party concept, and to build up and strengthen the vanguard party of the working class.

Party-building is a constant necessity requiring the continual attention of the Marxist-Leninists. All Marxist-Leninists must maintain a permanent stand of upholding, the party principle in all spheres of revolutionary work. This is not just an internal task of the party. The party concept must be brought to the workers. They must be led to understand that only by adherence to their own class party can the class struggle be really organized and made conscious, clear, definite and principled.

The MLP opposes any idea which counterposes party-building to the building of the mass movements. Rather, the party is built and becomes strong in the thick of the mass struggles, taking its stand fighting shoulder to shoulder with the working masses against the capitalist exploiters. By the same token, the essential road for building up the mass movements and welding together all of the separate rivulets of struggle into a single revolutionary torrent with the working class at the center is the work to build the Marxist-Leninist fighting vanguard party.

The MLP declares that the tasks to build up the struggle of the working class include strengthening revolutionary agitation among the working masses, developing their class consciousness and training them in revolutionary theory, and using the energy of the struggle to construct solid revolutionary organization.

Strengthen the Revolutionary Agitation

Essential to the training of the workers in their own class interests is the work to strengthen revolutionary agitation among the broadest sections of the working masses.

The working masses take an active interest in the political events of our day and gain rich experience in their day-to-day struggles. But they are repeatedly forced out of the political struggle, their mass movements disoriented and their growing class awareness suppressed by the bourgeoisie. The capitalists have constructed an enormous machine of mass news media, politicians, union bureaucrats, reformist misleaders, and so forth by which they seek to control public opinion, reign over the political scene and dominate the mass movements. Through this machine they distort facts, conceal their exploitative interests, preach class compromise and collaboration, and work to hitch the masses to the capitalist bandwagon.

For the working class to learn the truth, for it to be able to stand up to the enormous pressure from the bourgeoisie and become clear in what its true class interest resides, it must have its own voice. The MLP works to give the workers this voice through the building up of a far-flung system of working class agitation.

The agitation of the Party must have a consistently revolutionary character. For it to be truly uplifting, for it to help raise the workers as an independent force against the capitalists, it must reveal the real class content that lies behind the complicated swirl of current events. It must train the workers in complete hostility to the bourgeoisie and its state machine and teach the workers how to draw revolutionary conclusions from their own day-to-day experience. It must seek to guide every step of the struggle of the masses and teach them in the course of their struggles today the real aims and revolutionary goal of the workers' movement.

At the same time, for this agitation to take root among the masses it must be sensitive to their political mood. This does not mean, as the revisionists, social-democrats and liberal-labor politicians teach, that the Party should give up its militant stand and water down its revolutionary line to nothing. It does not mean inscribing on one's banner the least common denominator of all the prejudices and backward ideas currently fashionable. No, this is not sensitivity to the masses, but rather the lame justifications by which the opportunists try to blame their own treachery on the alleged backwardness of the masses. Being sensitive to the political mood among the masses means to find the way to link up with the still inconsistent, vacillating and incomplete revolutionary tendencies that exist among the masses. It means learning to appeal to the confused strivings of the still unawakened masses and helping to bring them forward to the communist stand.

In this regard the Party's agitation must pay attention to the exciting political events and the concrete questions of working class life which stir the masses into action. The agitation should be directed to arousing the widest section of the masses, to using the struggles to expose the sabotaging role of the opportunist left wing of the Democratic Party, and to educating the masses through their own experience in an independent class stand.

The agitation of the Party takes a multitude of forms. Through years of struggle the Party has built up a whole network of agitation which is national in scope and revolutionary in character. Centered on its national press, The Workers' Advocate, this network fans out into a wide system of local leaflets and papers, Party contingents in mass actions, verbal agitation, and so forth. The Party's agitation includes the El Estandarte Obrero and other Spanish language literature. Through the building up of this network the Party is able to maintain a well-considered and principled Marxist-Leninist analysis. And, at the same time, it has the flexibility to respond to events and to remain always in the thick of the mass struggles.

The work to strengthen the revolutionary agitation is not a matter for Party members alone. The Party encourages the workers and activists from the mass movements to take part in the revolutionary agitation and to join in the distribution of the Party's literature in the factories, the working class communities, the schools and in the mass movements generally. This work is essential to broaden the scope of the agitation and to increase its impact among the masses. Through this work the militant workers and other activists are drawn closer to the Party, step by step a pro-party trend sympathetic to and assisting the Party's work is built up, the Party's influence among the masses is strengthened, and the Party is able to play a stronger role in organizing and giving direction to the mass struggles.

Without a Revolutionary Theory There Can Be No Revolutionary Movement

The Party is able to discern the class interests of the workers in the complex whirl of events and to provide revolutionary answers to the burning questions of the day because it is guided by revolutionary theory. Marxism- Leninism is the revolutionary science of the working class, providing the workers consciousness of the socialist goal of their movement and practical guidance in the class struggle.

Karl Marx was the founder of communism. It was Marx and Frederick Engels, his lifelong friend and collaborator, who raised the banner that the working class was the revolutionary force that could transform the world. Before Marx and Engels, the working class had been regarded solely as a suffering mass, worthy only of pity. Before Marx and Engels, the socialists appealed to the rich and powerful to give up their evil habits and help the workers out of the goodness of their hearts. Marx and Engels taught the working class to stand up in its own right. Marx and Engels put socialism on the scientific basis of the class struggle of the workers and all the oppressed against the rich and powerful.

After the death of Marx and Engels, Lenin took up the Marxist banner and led the epoch-making October Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917. This great revolution proved in practice the correctness of the teachings of Marxism and advanced it to the stage of Marxism-Leninism. Lenin, basing himself on the solid foundations of Marxism, taught the workers many new lessons on building strong proletarian parties, carrying out the revolution and building socialism.

Today the workers' movement faces many difficult questions in its struggle against the bourgeoisie. Marxist- Leninist theory is an essential weapon to help answer these questions. Marxism-Leninism is not some hidebound catechism to be recited by dusty scholars. It is above all a guide to revolutionary work.

For example, in 1976 it was Marxist-Leninist theory that guided the movement against social-chauvinism. It was because of the detailed study and loyal following of the teachings of comrade Lenin that the comrades of COUSML were able to understand the issues of principle in this movement; they were able to guide it in the revolutionary direction of repudiating Maoist "three worldism'' and liberal-labor politics; and they were able to use the energy of the movement to help establish the Party in 1980.

Likewise today, it is the thoroughgoing study of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism that has assisted the Party to find the methods of approach to the masses to help them to break with the left wing of the Democratic Party and to move step by step closer to the revolution. The work to build the independent movement of the working class; the work to put opposition to imperialism in the center of the struggle against war preparations; the correct use of the economic struggle of the workers to expose the union bureaucrats and build up the Party; and so forth; all find their foundations in the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism.

The study of Marxist-Leninist theory, its application to the problems of our day, and the spread of the truth of Marxism-Leninism far and wide among the working masses remain essential tasks for the building of the Party and for advancing the working class movement.

But these tasks can only be accomplished through the most resolute struggle to defend Marxism-Leninism from the attacks of the capitalists and their opportunist handmaidens. Since the birth of Marxism, the capitalist rulers have waged an unrelenting war against it, a war that is all the more clamorous today. Each bourgeois sets himself the task of abolishing communism all over again -- for the specter of communism never dies. Reagan himself has taken the stage to try to discredit this revolutionary theory, to try to claim that the crisis of Russia, a crisis based on the restoration of capitalism by the revisionist betrayers of Marxism-Leninism, marks the demise of scientific socialism itself.

At the same time, the pro-Soviets, the Maoists and other trends of revisionism and Trotskyism are giving the capitalists the greatest help in their war on Marxism-Leninism. One of the principal features-of the current liquidationist crusade of the revisionists and trotskyites is their denigration of theory and their renunciation of the principles of Marxism-Leninism. These trends all claim to be communist, but they distort Marxist-Leninist theory, they rob it of its revolutionary principles, and they work to dress up reformism and class collaboration in a Marxist-Leninist disguise.

The lies and confusion mongering of the capitalists and their revisionist and opportunist little helpers must be opposed. The workers must and will organize themselves as a class; they will mount the stage of history as a political force independent of and in struggle against the capitalist despots when they rally behind the leadership of a party based on the most advanced revolutionary theory. A powerful struggle must be waged to defend the teachings of Marxism-Leninism from attacks, no matter from what quarter, and to wield this science as a mighty lever to mobilize and organize the working masses.

Today the MLP raises the watchword of BACK TO THE CLASSICS OF MARXISM-LENINISM! This is a call to defend the revolutionary teachings of Marxism-Leninism. It is an appeal to study deeply the Marxist-Leninist theory as a guide to provide revolutionary answers to the perplexing problems of our movement. It is a declaration that the Party must work without letup to bring the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism to the broad masses of workers, to give them faith in the invincibility of their movement and sure direction in organizing themselves as an independent revolutionary force, the leader and mainstay of the socialist revolution.

Build Up the Organizations of the Workers

In the struggle against the capitalists, the workers have only their class consciousness and superior numbers. But for these to be united and welded into a force that can defend the interests of the workers and successfully confront the power of the bourgeoisie, the workers must be organized. Organization, this is the powerful weapon that can transform the workers from a class of downtrodden wage slaves into a revolutionary force capable of standing at the head of society, overthrowing the old world of the exploiters and building the new, advanced world of socialism.

The organization of the workers requires the building of a multitude of organizations of the most diverse types. Compact and disciplined groups to loose-knit ones, illegal forms and legal ones, trade unions, anti-imperialist organizations, groups to fight racist oppression, and so forth; the working class needs them all for it has no other way of consolidating its positions in the diverse spheres of the class struggle.

But how are these multitude of organizations to be built up to serve the overall interests of the working class struggle? How are they to be guided in one direction, along a single line of march against the capitalist exploiters? For this the working class needs a rallying center, a fighting headquarters, in short, a vanguard party. The Marxist- Leninist vanguard is the highest form of class organization of the proletariat, the organization that must guide forward all the others.

In the work to build the Party today attention must be paid to enhancing its leading, mobilizing and organizing role. This requires great efforts to instill among the workers the party concept. Through its revolutionary agitation, in its work in the mass struggles, in its activity in the other organizations of the workers, and in every aspect of its revolutionary work the Party must show the masses of the workers that it is their most consistent defender and farsighted representative., The working masses must be brought to see the Party as their own instrument for the class struggle and rallied to follow its leadership.

The Party, in all of its work, encourages the militant workers and other activists to lend a hand. No matter what the task may be, the Party works to explain its importance, to consult the workers and gain their assistance. Out of the protracted ideological, political and organizational work the Party gradually gathers around itself a trend of activists who sympathize with the all-round work of the Party and help it in this work. The creation and organizational consolidation of this pro-party trend is a most important task. Through it the Party strengthens its influence among the broad masses and from this trend the Party recruits the best revolutionary elements into its own ranks.

At the same time the Party pays attention to building up genuine fighting mass organizations. Where conditions exist for them, the Party directly initiates mass forms. Many of the already existent mass organizations today are under the domination of reformist misleaders, of flunkeys of the Democratic Party. Nevertheless, where such organizations reflect actual motion or ferment among the masses, the Party strives to work with them, to assist the mass struggles, to expose the reformists and to win the masses in them to independent class positions.

The pace of building up mass organizations and of the numerical growth of the various organized forces of the revolution depends on a number of factors such as: the degree of ferment among the toiling masses; the savage opposition by the bourgeoisie and by its opportunist lackeys; the detailed work of the Party; and so forth. This pace cannot be arbitrarily speeded up or breakthroughs achieved by diluting the Party's line or by simply declaring on paper that one has a "mass organization.'' There are no short cuts. It is the protracted and continuous ideological, political and organizational work of the Party that is paving the way towards the building of broader mass organizations that are actually organizations of action, organizations truly independent of the capitalists, organizations that mark a real development of the initiative and activity of the working class and progressive masses.

Among the diverse fronts, the Party centers its attention on the permanent work of building up the organizations of the workers at the factories, mills and other work places. This work affects all others since through it the Party mobilizes and organizes the workers to take their proper place at the center of the various mass movements. In the final analysis, it is the success in the building of the Party itself in the factories, and around it a myriad of other organizational forms that encompass the masses of workers, that determines whether or not the workers become organized as a class and are able to lead all the other oppressed and downtrodden people against the capitalist exploiters. At this time the economic crisis and the offensive of the capitalists, which includes widespread plant closings, enormous layoffs, and so forth, have in many cases disrupted the organization of the workers. This situation can be overcome only through the greatest effort. The Party must pay attention to spreading its revolutionary agitation very widely through the factories and finding ways to link up with the workers wherever possible. At the same time, Party forces must be concentrated to carry out detailed and painstaking work in the most significant of the plants.

The Party cannot allow its forces to become scattered. To give full play to its important organizational role, the Party must concentrate its forces on the key areas of work and struggle. At this time, while the organized forces of the revolution grow slowly and only through the continuous and painstaking efforts of the Party, there are initial stirrings of the masses over wide fronts. This situation puts many complicated tasks before the Party and can lead, if care is not taken, to spreading the Party's forces so thin that they become impotent. To be effective, the Party bodies at every level must make a sober assessment of the actual situation and deploy their forces in a concentrated way so that they can strike the hardest blows at the bourgeoisie.

On the Organization of the Party

The leading, mobilizing and organizing role of the Party can only be built up through constant work to strengthen the internal organization of the Party. Comrade Lenin emphasizes that:

"The party is the politically conscious, advanced section of the class, it is its vanguard. The strength of that vanguard is ten times, a hundred times, more than a hundred times, greater than its numbers.

"Is that possible? Can the strength of hundreds be greater than the strength of thousands?

"It can be, and is, when the hundreds are organized." ("How Vera Zasulich Demolishes Liquidationism," 1913, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 406)

The Party is able to unite its members, from the local branches and basic units to the Central Committee, and organize them into a powerful fighting machine by following,the basic organizational principle of democratic centralism.

The Party requires an iron proletarian discipline and a powerful centralism in order to be a fighting organization, an organization of revolutionary struggle. The Party is monolithic ideologically and organizationally, without factions. The discipline of the Party is uniform on all members, from the rank-and-file communist to the member of the Central Committee and the National Executive Committee.

The discipline of the Party is a conscious discipline. Inner-party democracy is a means of increasing the activity and consciousness of the members. Full discussion of Party affairs is vital to ensure the consciousness of the members, to increase their activization around the line and to ensure a correct decision by the Party. The development of inner- party democracy and the strengthening of a conscious discipline are intimately bound up with each other. All members of Party bodies must take part in making the decisions and in implementing them. The basic units and Party committees at every level must develop self-motion, initiative and a creative spirit. This self-motion and initiative as well as inner-party discussion in general is manifested in close connection with the actual concrete tasks of the Party and the revolution and serve their solution. The Party opposes interminable discussion or ultra-democracy, discussion without aim, discussion for the sake of discussion or for undermining the unity and solidity of the Party. At the same time, suppression of criticism and retaliation for criticism are impermissible, and there is also the right to reserve one's views.

The requirements of democratic centralism demand that:

a) The Party follows the elective principle, modified when necessary by the conditions of struggle under the terrorist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

b) The Central Committee is obliged to inform the members of the basic policies of the Party and of the Central Committee. The Party branch committees are obliged to keep the members in the local area informed of its policies.

c) All Party committees must listen continuously to the opinion of lower Party organizations and the mass of members and study their experience.

d) The lower Party organizations must report on their work and activity to the higher Party organizations.

e) The minority is subordinate to the majority, and the decisions of the higher Party organizations are binding on the lower Party organizations.

f) In leading lower bodies and particularly when addressing questions within the sphere of competence of lower bodies, a Party body must strive to avoid arbitrary, administrative actions and should instead make wide use of the method of consultation and education.

g) Decisions are taken after a free thrashing out of opinion, but from the moment a decision is taken, everyone is obliged to implement it.

The collective method is a fundamental principle of the leading work of the Party. The Party bodies at all levels must implement the principle of combining collective leadership with individual responsibility.

To carry out its work, Party members are organized into smaller working groups called basic units. The basic unit is a self-moving, compact body for carrying out the work of the revolution. It is a conscious body and maintains its own internal life. The Party demands that all of its members not only support the Party program but also actively carry out the work of the Party. Through organizing its members into basic units the Party ensures that they are active and releases their initiative and creativity in the revolutionary work. The basic units concentrate their work at factories or other material bases. They form the main link of the Party with the proletariat and other masses.

The development of links with the masses is one of the crucial norms of the Party. The revolution is not accomplished by the Party alone, but by the broad masses of the people with the leadership of the Party.

The Party has summed up a number of other issues from its organizational work, and that of its predecessors, over the years. These include the following:

The Party is against the revisionist and social-democratic theories of coexistence with opportunism and unprincipled peace within the Party and of factionalism as well as against anarchist and sectarian methods of party struggle. The class struggle in the Party is directed against the influence of alien class ideas, against the infiltration of the Party, and towards the constant strengthening of the unity and internal life of the Party and for the implementation of its policies, norms and tasks.

The norms, discipline and formality of the Party have not been simply established by decree. They have been built up in the course of the revolutionary struggle. Their further strengthening is inseparably linked with the further development of the revolutionary activity of the Party, its advances in the carrying out of the decisive tasks of the revolution, and constant attention to building the Party and fighting anti-Marxist trends.

The Party opposes bureaucracy and self-satisfied inaction and also arbitrariness and hit-or-miss methods. The Party acts boldly and without hesitation in a revolutionary way. It avoids intellectualism and squabbling inaction which hides behind the pretext of the need to have the perfect plan, the elaborated recipe or the intellectualist schema. At the same time, it avoids arbitrariness and unprincipled splits. The authority of the Party's decisions is not based solely on their being majority decisions. Their authority is based first and foremost on their being correct, revolutionary decisions based on Marxism-Leninism and in full conformity with the objective situation, and the Party norms are the indispensable tools for ensuring the correctness of the decisions and the full mobilization of the members and militants of the Party. If no basis exists to take a decision on a matter of principle, then any necessary immediate practical matters are attended to, while the Party committee works to establish the basis to decide the matter of principle by such actions as appropriate such as: the accumulation of further revolutionary experience on the issue, theoretical work including the study of the classics of Marxism-Leninism, the request for instructions from a higher Party committee and so forth.

The Party is built under the conditions of brutal terror by the bourgeoisie. The maintenance of the secrecy of the Party, the keeping secret of the inner-organizational affairs of the Party, is an absolute necessity and a most vital part of Party discipline. The Party can maintain its security only by combining the widest spread of its political line and the great extension of its links with the masses with the strictest, iron observation of the organizational integrity and secrecy of the Party.

In the work of the Party bodies at all levels, it is necessary to pay attention to major issues, to develop revolutionary sweep, and not be totally submerged in daily routines and minor matters.

C. The Struggle Against Liquidationism and Merger With Social-Democracy

Today the advance of the cause of the working class demands a most vigorous struggle against the liquidationist trend of the revisionists and trotskyites.

Liquidationism is the attempt to dress up liberal-labor politics in a "Marxist-Leninist" and "communist" disguise. It is the denigration of revolutionary spirit and the denial of the necessity for building up the independent class movement of the proletariat in favor of merger with social-democracy, with the soldout union bureaucracy, with the entire liberal-labor marsh centered on the Democratic Party. Liquidationism is the attempt to bury the very idea of the workers building up their own revolutionary vanguard party. It is the replacement of the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism with the "realistic politics" of class collaboration.

In the U.S. today all of the main currents of revisionism, including the pro-Soviet revisionists, the Maoists and the trotskyites, have taken up positions of vulgar liquidationism. The struggle against liquidationism has come to the fore as the central focus, the pivot of our tactics against all of the revisionist currents. This is a struggle to defend the proletarian party and the principles of Marxism-Leninism. It is, at the same time, a fight to imbue the working class with the party concept, an essential struggle for forging the working class into an independent revolutionary force.

The Legacy of Browderite Liquidationism

Liquidationism in the U.S. workers' movement finds its roots in the rise of Browderite revisionism in the Communist Party, USA starting in the mid-1930's.

The CPUSA, founded in 1919, was the genuine fighting vanguard of the U.S. working class. Then and in the early 1920's, the advanced section of the workers broke with social-democracy and rallied to the CPUSA. Throughout the 1920's the Party was step by step consolidated, it established revolutionary mass organizations, and it led strikes and other struggles of the working masses. With the upsurge in the workers' movement in the 1930's, the revolutionary work of the CP found wide support among the working masses. It led broad sections of the industrial workers, the unemployed and the oppressed nationalities into important mass battles against the capitalists. But Earl Browder, who was then its general secretary, frittered away the revolutionary gains. Under his leadership the Party was corrupted and eventually dissolved outright.

Browderism corroded the revolutionary line of the CP. It fell under the sway of the Browderite policy of subordinating the workers to the liberals and soldout union bureaucrats in the big Rooseveltian coalition of the Democratic Party.

At the same time, Browderism step by step disorganized the CP. He worked to eliminate, one after the other, the red trade unions and other independent mass organizations, the Party fractions in all of the trade unions and the basic organizations in the factories. In 1944 Browder liquidated the CP outright. In its place he established a loose "educational association," an organization built according to the social-democratic model and carrying a social-democratic political line.

Although Browder was eventually expelled and the CP was reconstituted in 1945, it never fully repudiated the social-democratic policy of Browder and, in the mid-1950's, it quickly fell under the sway of Khrushchovite revisionism. The CPUSA has come down to the present as a model of a liquidators' party. It is not a party of action, but a loose and amorphous organization which operates on the basis of an extensive network of contacts in the liberal-labor circles. It is a "left" party of the rich, a mere shadow and fellow- traveler of the Democratic Party. Today its only "independence" from the capitalist parties is to espouse the interests of Soviet social-imperialism as well as those of the capitalists in the U.S.

Factors for the Current Rise of Liquidationism

At the end of the 1970's a series of Maoist organizations, which had emerged during the revolutionary storms at the end of the 1960's and the beginning of the 1970's, also adopted barefaced liquidationist positions. Fostered by these groups, together with the CPUSA and the trotskyite liquidators, a mood of renegacy and liquidationism swept through the revolutionary movement.

The current rise of liquidationism has come about due to a number of factors. Some of these include:

1) Capitulation to the capitalist offensive. In the latter half of the Carter administration and then with the ascendancy of Reagan to the White House, the capitalists unleashed an all-sided offensive against the working class, the oppressed nationalities and the revolutionary movement. This offensive of the capitalists created a more difficult situation for revolutionary work.

Instead of facing up to this difficulty and using the situation to encourage the class struggle, the revisionists and the opportunists generally trimmed their sails, watered down their politics, and searched out the safe harbor of class peace. Liquidationism is the reflection of the capitalist offensive within the revolutionary movement.

2) The activation of social-democracy and reformism. Side by side with the capitalist offensive, the bourgeoisie has stepped up its use of social-democracy and reformism as its favorite weapons to stamp out the revolt which is brewing among the masses and to keep them under capitalist influence.

The period from the end of the 1970's has seen the founding and merger of numbers of social-democratic organizations, the promotion of avowedly social-democratic union hacks, the blossoming of social-democratic conferences, and the creation of social-democratic coalitions in one after another of the mass movements. The chief feature of social-democracy in the U.S. is prettifying the Democratic Party and putting forth its program in "progressive" and even "socialist" colors. At the same time social-democracy tries to deflect the growing mass anger at both the big capitalist parties, the Republicans as well as the Democrats, and works to sabotage the development of the independent class movement of the proletariat.

Along with the declared social-democrats, a whole array of other reformists are being thrown into action. Reformist misleaders of the oppressed nationalities are being thrust into the foreground; even the crusty old AFL-CIO bureaucracy is being given a new "reform" image; and "populist" and reform-spouting capitalist politicians are being run in one election after another. Together the social-democrats and other reformists are the main tool of the capitalists to cool down the mass movements, to eliminate their oppositional character, and to subordinate them to the "respectable" bourgeois politics of the Democratic Party.

Instead of exposing the social-democrats and other reformists and working to break the masses from the influence of the Democratic Party, the revisionists and trotskyites are adapting themselves to social-democracy and reformism. Liquidationism is the merger with social-democracy and the dressing up of "unity" with the Democratic Party in pseudo-Marxist-Leninist disguises.

3) The utter fiasco of Chinese revisionism and Maoism. The open betrayal of the Chinese revisionists, their dropping of any pretense of being revolutionary communists and their disgusting reveling in their alliance with U.S. imperialism and international reaction has had a profound affect on the revolutionary movement in the U.S.

It opened the floodgates for the pro-Soviet revisionists. The debacle of the Chinese revisionists has been used to discredit the repudiation of Khrushchovite revisionism and to trample in the mud the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism. The CPUSA and other revisionist and trotskyite groups felt free to drop their more militant posturings, to take the gloves off their liberal-labor yearnings.

Moreover, the renegacy of the Chinese revisionists accelerated the decay of neo-revisionism, that trend which has been, in the main, the American expression of Chinese revisionism.

The neo-revisionists, from their inception at the end of the 1960's and the beginning of the 1970's, held to many anti-party and social-democratic views. However, under the impact of the struggle of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists in favor of the party principle and against opportunism generally, the neo-revisionists for a period feigned a more orthodox revolutionary stance and even formed their own "parties." Time proved that neo-revisionism, with its Maoist ideological basis, was incapable of leading the revolutionary movement. It repeatedly fell into reconciliation with the liberal-labor marsh. And in 1976 it gave birth to open social-chauvinism.

The Communist Party/ML, the League of Revolutionary Struggle (ML), the Communist Workers' Party and other Maoists renounced the fight against U.S. imperialism in the name of "directing the main blow against Soviet social-imperialism'' or that it was "the main danger.'' They launched a whole campaign against alleged "appeasement'' of the social-imperialists and the CPML even went to the extent of crusading for the building of B-l bombers and other systems of imperialist mass slaughter. The blossoming of the reactionary U.S.-China alliance, among other things, had had its affect and neo-revisionism went bankrupt.

The current liquidationism is but the culmination of the bankruptcy of neo-revisionism.

The Liquidationist Mood

Due to these and other factors, the 1980's began with a broad crusade to submerge the revolutionary movement in liquidationism. Shouting loudly, the liquidators threw overboard the revolutionary traditions and lessons from the revolutionary movement of the I960's. It became the fashion to mock at revolutionary work and to sneer at revolutionary theory. Even past phrases against pro-Soviet revisionism were repudiated, while chatter began about the supposedly "positive'' contributions of the notorious Browder. And, in the mad rush to link up with the social-democrats and the soldout union hacks, a foul-mouthed clamor was thrown up against the very idea of the working class forging its own revolutionary vanguard party.

The initial impulse of this crusade, with all of its shouting against the party concept and with its tearful pining after the greener pastures of social-democracy, led "Headquarters,'' the CPML, its social-democratic reflection, the CPUSA/ML, and other opportunist groups to take their liquidationism to its logical conclusion. They dissolved their organizations outright and cast their members adrift in the social-democratic milieu.

Other of the Maoist and trotskyite groups, while adapting themselves to social-democracy, are trying to maintain some semblance of organization themselves. For this purpose they are forced to model themselves after the CPUSA, a loose liquidator-style party based in the liberal-labor marsh. They are elaborating fully social-democratic programs and are concentrating their efforts on campaigns for unity with the avowed social-democrats, on seeking cozy positions in the union bureaucracy, and on playing the sandbox game of "pushing the Democratic Party to the left.''

This direction of merger with social-democracy has led to a corrosive situation in their own ranks. Centrifugal forces have been released resulting in, among other things, desertions to the avowed social-democratic groups and a general complacency towards work for their own organizations.

Therefore, these liquidators attempt to retain at least a thin disguise of Marxism-Leninism in order to find some pretext to claim that they have a reason to exist as separate entities within the social-democratic swamp. They also want to have some appeal to the more militant and class conscious workers.

Recently the revisionist leaders from several groups, including the granddaddy of the liquidators, the CPUSA, have even been seen wringing their hands about "liquidationist tendencies" in their own organizations. But their sniveling about their own liquidationism is not aimed at correcting their line or putting themselves on a Marxist-Leninist course. Rather, it is an attempt to hold their groups together as they turn even farther to the right.

Fashionable Preachings

The stifling mood of liquidationism has brought with it a flurry of fashionable ideas and practices aimed at justifying the turn to renegacy and at advancing the descent into the swamp of social-democracy.

The hallmark of liquidationism, the centerpiece of Its policy, is the drive to merger with social-democracy and reformism. While promoting unity with the social-democrats and joining hands with them in the social-democratic campaigns, the liquidators are also swallowing whole the social- democratic theory and program. In this they find a complete plan for abandoning the revolution and reducing the workers' movement to a mere "pressure group" or "special interest group" within the liberal-labor coalition of the Democratic Party.

Thus we see the liquidators currying favor with one or another section of the soldout union hacks and seeking a comfortable niche in the union bureaucracy; linking up with the "respectable" misleaders among the oppressed nationalities; and searching out smooth-talking capitalist politicians to hitch their wagon to. This is the bread and butter of the liquidators to which they submerge every impulse of the workers towards independent organization and action.

In recent years the liquidators have cooked up numerous half-baked ideas to renounce the struggle against social-democracy and reformism. Some of the liquidators have made the ludicrous claim that the reformist union bureaucrats and the social-democratic misleaders are "really not a force in the U.S." and, therefore, the fight against them is unnecessary. It has also become fashionable to claim that the reformists are, while not revolutionary, at least "progressive." Turning a blind eye to the reformists' sabotage of the day-to-day struggles of the masses, the liquidators paint them up as playing a "positive role" in the fight for reforms and demand unity with them, at least up to the day of revolution.

By the same token the liquidators have thrown overboard any ideas of struggle against revisionism. The Maoists and others have cast aside their former opposition to Khrushchovite revisionism and are prettifying the new revisionist exploiters of the Russian workers as, although not perfect perhaps, at least the architects of "socialism." At the same time the liquidators are reveling in Browderism and some have even gone to the extent of casting the infamous Browder himself in a new "positive" role.

As well, the liquidators have distorted the concept of the united front into appeals for unity with the labor traitors and the liberal capitalists. For the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists, the tactics of the united front are a powerful weapon to draw the rank-and-file workers together in actual mass struggle against the capitalists. But the liquidators turn these tactics upside down. For today's liquidators, as with Browder before them, the "united front" is just a signboard hung up to prettify their dirty maneuverings with the sellouts and traitors to the cause of the workers. Unity of the working masses against the capitalists is converted into liberal-labor unity, into unity of the labor bureaucrats and the liberal capitalists of the Democratic Party against the struggle of the workers.

In the name of unity and seeking greater numbers, the liquidators are tossing aside party-building and, indeed even the idea of constructing militant organization of the rank-and-file workers. The current rage is for flash-in-the-pan coalitions and flabby networks consisting of chieftains of social-democracy and revisionism. Pulled together on the basis of some formula representing the lowest common denominator uniting various opportunists, these are organizations without militant activity. And frequently their calls are for a "struggle" that confronts no class enemy whatsoever. They are nothing but paper organizations which will prove impotent at the first sign of serious struggle.

Nevertheless, for the sake of creating such "broad" forms the liquidators renounce the building of any genuine independent organization of the working masses. Of late even the idea of building militant rank-and-file organization is denounced as not concrete because it "ignores" organizing the sellouts who supposedly "lead labor." And the idea of building a vanguard party to lead the masses is considered pure blasphemy. No, the liquidators say, you must hide your face, submerge yourself in the "broad" forms, and tone down your line until it is indistinguishable from liberalism.

Similarly, the liquidators renounce even the pretense of revolutionary work in the mass movements. For them mass work consists solely in apeing the latest fashionable campaign of the social-democrats and digging up union bigwigs and Democratic Party liberals to speak from their platforms.

Of late a craze for electoralism is being used to sweep aside all thoughts of building up the mass movements. The liquidators are all abuzz with talk that electoral work must be "the chief work in this period" and that work in the elections is the "safest" and therefore "the principal mass form" of struggle at this time. Under this signboard the liquidators downplay the organization of mass actions and attempt to steer the mass movements into the dead end of supporting "left"-sounding Democratic Party politicians.

The Marxist-Leninists uphold active participation in the electoral field. The question is not whether to participate but how. The Marxist-Leninists hold that the election campaigns must be used to build the revolutionary movement. Although this is a subordinate form of struggle, it is of use in educating the masses and in drawing them into independent political action. The Marxist-Leninists may run candidates, or support candidates, or, while denouncing all of the candidates, carry out campaigns to explain the burning issues involved in the election race. Which of these is done in any particular case depends on the circumstances. But in any event the election campaigns must be used to tell the masses the truth, to rally them in struggles against the capitalists and to help them break from the influence of the capitalist political parties.

But for the liquidators electoral work has become a euphemism for toning down the mass struggle and supporting Democratic Party liberals. Under such slogans as "unity (with Democrats) against Reagan" and "pushing the Democrats to the left," the liquidators have become the foot soldiers and admen for Democratic Party candidates.

The mood of liquidationism has also brought with it a distinct distaste for revolutionary theory. The social-democrats have long mocked at even the thought of having a coherent, integral world outlook as "vanguardism" and "correct positionism."

A section of the liquidators openly echo the social-democrats, sneering at Marxism-Leninism as "doctrinairism" and ridiculing the theoretical struggle as supposedly being "Maoist two-line struggle." Others simply put Marxist- Leninist theory away on a dusty old shelf. It may be pulled out and admired now and again on festive occasions. But the dogma of the "left" wing of the Democratic Party is considered better for guiding their day-to-day work.

The liquidators replace Marxist-Leninist principle with the dirty maneuverings of "realistic" politics. Of late everything is justified under the idea of gaining greater numbers. Water down the line, water down the organization, set aside one's convictions, kiss up to the "respectable" misleaders, anything and everything is allowed as long as it holds out the promise of appearing larger. The social-democrats have dubbed themselves the "left wing of the possible." And what they consider possible is that which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie, is unity with and subordination to the capitalist politicians of the Democratic Party. The liquidators have joined the social-democrats in this liberal-labor swamp. For them Marxism-Leninism is not the theory enabling one to see farther than the present fashion, the guide to lead the workers out of the morass of capitalist politics. Rather, the liquidators distort Marxism- Leninism, snatch phrases from it as catchwords, to prettify and justify their own liberal-labor concepts.

Against the liquidators' renunciation of principle and denigration of revolutionary theory the MLP raises the call: BACK TO THE CLASSICS OF MARXISM-LENINISM! This is a call to all class conscious workers and revolutionary activists to defend the principles of Marxism-Leninism, to study and apply the Marxist-Leninist theory to solve the problems confronting the revolutionary movement today and to spread the truth of Marxism-Leninism widely among the working masses.

Liquidationism also has an anarchist wing. An example of anarchist-style liquidationism is the semi-anarchist antics of the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. The RCP has always represented a combination of economism and revolutionary phrasemongering. Today too they maintain their rightist stands. They combine a constant refrain of hosannahs to the great days of revolution somewhere in the future with repeated attempts at joint campaigns with the social-democrats and liberal reformists.

The semi-anarchist phrasemongering of the RCP leads them to a practical policy that dovetails with that of liquidationism. For example, while the right-wing liquidators desert the proletariat to play pat-a-cake with the labor bureaucrats, the RCP deserts the factories altogether, grumbling that the workers have allegedly "sold out." While the other liquidators join the union hacks in sabotaging the economic struggles of the workers, the RCP denounces the workers' economic struggle outright as supposedly being "economist" and a "fight for a bribe." While the liquidators denigrate organization to create vague and limp networks, the RCP pontificates against the monolithic Leninist party as supposedly being a "dictatorship" and a "strait-jacket" on the masses. While the right-wing liquidators denigrate Marxist-Leninist theory, the RCP's way of upholding Marxism-Leninism is to denounce one after another of its basic principles as one more mistake of Marx and Lenin. On these and other questions the RCP approaches liquidationism from the angle of "left"-sounding slogans, of "revolutionary" phrasemongering. But its policy remains a liquidator's policy just the same.

At the same time the RCP downplays the struggle against social-democracy. And, whenever it desires to approach the masses or to gain numbers for its campaigns, the RCP can think of nothing better than to follow the traditional liquidationist policy. It waters down its line and seeks to join hands with the social-democrats, the reformists and liberals. Despite its semi-anarchist shouting, the RCP remains a slave to the trend of liquidationism and merger with social-democracy.

The Class Basis of Liquidationism

The struggle between revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and liquidationism is based on and is a manifestation of the class struggle in society.

It is no accident that the liquidators are deserting the working class for a love dance with the labor bureaucrats, with the social-democrats and with the liberal-labor politicians generally. Marxism-Leninism expresses the revolutionary interests of the proletariat and finds its base of support among them. But liquidationism represents the influence of the bourgeoisie in the workers' movement.

The social basis of liquidationism is a soldout stratum drawn from the labor aristocracy and the petty bourgeoisie. This stratum is bribed out of the super-profits of imperialist plunder and acts as the watchdog of capitalism, the representative of class compromise, the purveyors of accommodation with the capitalist offensive, the channel for bourgeois ideology and bourgeois influence in the working class movement.

Unity of the sellouts and the capitalists against the interests of the workers, this is the real basis of liquidationism. It simply represents the bourgeois influence dressed up in "Marxist-Leninist" and "communist''-sounding phrases.

Forward in the Struggle Against Liquidationism!

The Marxist-Leninist Party considers the rise of liquidationism in the recent period to be a most significant development threatening the working class movement. Liquidationism and the advocacy and practice of merger with social-democracy have become the central features of the bitter revisionist war against revolutionary Marxism- Leninism and for the corruption of the working class movement. The struggle against liquidationism has necessarily come to the fore as the central focus, or pivot, of the Marxist-Leninist tactics against all of the various revisionist currents, against the pro-Soviet revisionists, the Maoists, the trotskyites and others.

The fight against liquidationism is an essential part of the work to build the independent movement of the working class. If the workers are to stand up in their own class interests, they must break from the influence of the liberals of the Democratic Party. If the working class movement is to emerge on an independent road, then the workers must develop a healthy hostility to the handmaidens of the Democratic Party, to the social-democrats and soldout union bureaucrats. But the liquidators are trying to bar the door to this road. They are working to cover up the crimes of the social-democrats against the workers; to paint up "unity" with the workers' worst enemies as the "realistic" way to let the workers' voice be heard; to dress up class betrayal in a "militant" and "Marxist-Leninist" disguise.

It is essential then to tear away the phony masks of the liquidators in order to ensure the organization of the workers into their independent class movement and to defend the revolutionary honor of Marxism-Leninism.

A struggle must be waged to expose the liquidators' treachery in the concrete struggles of the working masses. This is a fight to overcome the liquidators' sabotage of the immediate mass struggles and to educate the workers in hostility to the entire political trend of liquidationism.

A struggle must also be waged to build up revolutionary organization. The liquidators are trying to keep the workers disorganized and to rob the workers' movement of its leadership. Therefore the fight against liquidationism must be used to build up the Marxist-Leninist Party, to train the workers in party concept and to encourage them to forge genuine organizations of the masses.

At the same time, the struggle against liquidationism must be given a deep ideological content. This struggle must be used to bring out and elaborate the principles of Marxism-Leninism, to direct the workers to the study of the Marxist-Leninist theory, to train them in the science of revolution. It is a struggle against the fashionable Browderite distortions and to base the workers' movement on the classic teachings of Marxism-Leninism.

The MLP holds that there can be no peace in the struggle between revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and revisionist liquidationism. This is a life and death struggle for the defense of the Party and Marxism-Leninism, an indispensable battle for the class independence of the proletariat, a bitter conflict essential for the advance of the revolutionary movement.

[Graphic: Party distribution networks in the factories and other work places bring revolutionary literature to the workers.]

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IV. ON THE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION

A. Introduction: The Struggle Between Exploiter and Exploited, Oppressor and Oppressed, Lies Behind the Tangle of World Events

Underlying the complex tangle of world events is the clash between two hostile camps: the confrontation between the camp of capital and the camp of labor. On one side stands the old world of capitalist exploitation, reaction, imperialism and aggressive war. On the other side stands the world of revolutionary struggle, of the working masses who are striving for a new world without exploitation, oppression and enslaving wars.

On a world scale, imperialism and the bourgeoisie is unleashing a many-sided offensive against the workers and oppressed. This is a brutal and ominous offensive of hunger, fascism, national oppression and imperialist war. This offensive carries with it grave dangers for mankind. At the same time, it must also be seen that world capital is launching its attack from positions of deep crisis and disintegration.

The whole bourgeois-revisionist world has been plunged into an economic crisis that is comparable only to the world crisis of the 1930's. The inter-imperialist conflicts over markets and spheres of influence are growing ever more aggravated. A revolutionary ferment is spreading among the working masses, and major revolutionary battles are being fought in a number of countries. In short, all the contradictions of imperialism, contradictions which give rise to catastrophic crises and aggressive wars and also to revolutionary storms, are steadily intensifying.

To shore up their tottering world empires, the two imperialist superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, are unleashing direct and indirect wars of intervention against the toiling masses. The U.S. imperialists are applying the big stick of gunboat diplomacy and military intervention. They have dispatched their forces of aggression and blackmail all over the globe. This includes the escalation of the U.S. war of intervention against the revolutionary peoples of Central America; the criminal invasion of Grenada by the U.S. marines; and the unleashing of the zionist war machine against Lebanon and the dispatch of U.S. occupation forces to Beirut. The Soviet social-imperialists, too, are waging their own war of occupation against the people of Afghanistan, and they continue to threaten the people of Poland with the same fate. Every day these two world policemen are committing new atrocities, which expose them as the hangmen of the revolution and the peoples' liberation struggle.

The world's people watch with deep concern and anger as the two superpowers steadily escalate the stakes in their deadly game of imperialist rivalry. This inter-imperialist contradiction is growing sharper and sharper. Each superpower is making preparations to resolve the conflict through a world nuclear slaughter. Both sides are spending hundreds of billions a year for arming and rearming, for building up their stockpiles of nuclear missiles, nerve gas, and other weapons of mass human destruction. Both sides are feverishly preparing for a war to redivide markets and spheres of influence, to see which imperialist slave master will seize more slaves and territory. Both sides stand equally for counter-revolution, exploitation, plunder and conquest.

World imperialism and capitalism are divided between two big blocs, the Western imperialist bloc of capitalist states led by U.S. imperialism, and the Eastern revisionist bloc of revisionist-capitalist states led by Soviet social-imperialism. These two blocs are striving to bolster their main military alliances, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, forge other military alliances and seize strategic points.

In the Western imperialist bloc, besides the U.S., the other big imperialist powers -- Britain, West Germany, France, Japan, Canada, etc., -- are also baring their fangs. Along with the U.S. these powers are the pillars of the Western imperialist alliance. Within this partnership of imperialist wolves there are varying degrees and forms of economic, diplomatic and military dependence on U.S. imperialism. U.S. imperialism does its best to bully these countries, but at the same time these countries remain major capitalist powers in their own right, who are more and more demanding a greater share at the trough of imperialist plunder and who are increasingly flexing their economic, political and military might. They too are arming to the teeth and launching their own criminal aggressions. Witness the criminal war between the British imperialist pirates and the reactionary Argentine generals over the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands; British imperialism's ever more savage military occupation of Northern Ireland; the intervention of French imperialism's Foreign Legion in Chad; the dispatch of French, British and Italian occupation troops alongside the U.S. Marines in Lebanon; and the quickening steps of Japanese and West German imperialism towards re-militarization. A newcomer and unofficial member of the U.S.-led Western alliance, revisionist China, also has its own social-imperialist ambitions and has shown its own fangs in its conflict with Viet Nam.

In the imperialist heartlands, all the monopoly capitalist regimes are tightening the screws on the working people. They are sharpening their reactionary swords of repression and fascizing their rule against the working masses. They are intensifying exploitation at home and squeezing the toilers abroad. They are fanning nationalist sentiments as they build up their arsenals for enslaving wars. This capitalist offensive is unfolding under the openly conservative and reactionary regimes (Reagan, Thatcher, Kohl, Nakasone, etc.), as well as under the social-democratic regimes (Mitterrand, etc.), and under the revisionist-state monopoly capitalist regimes (Andropov, etc.).

The dependent countries face disastrous crises. Most of these countries are drowning in a sea of debt to the imperialist financiers and their economies are in desperate straits. Many of the larger and stronger of these countries (Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria, Poland, etc.) have staggering international debts which themselves threaten international financial crises. The imperialists and the bourgeois regimes are resorting to the most ruthless measures to rob and plunder the working masses of these countries. In one country after another the exploiters are unleashing military rule, troops and terror against the revolts of the workers and peasants.

Against this world capitalist offensive of hunger, fascism and war stands the world camp of labor and the revolution. This is the camp of the world proletarian movement; of the liberation movements of the oppressed peoples; and of the socialist countries, of which today there is only one, socialist Albania.

In the capitalist metropolises there is a broad ferment building up among the working masses. General strikes, strike waves and massive protests against capitalist austerity measures and unemployment have swept a series of countries, including countries that only yesterday were being trumpeted as miracles of class peace and eternal prosperity. The streets of Western Europe, North America and Japan are scenes of huge demonstrations against the nuclear buildup and imperialist aggression. In a number of countries there have also been important demonstrations and street battles against the growing reaction of the bourgeoisie, racist oppression and the fascist gangs.

The development of the revolutionary movement in these countries faces major hurdles and has been proceeding unevenly. The working class still faces a steep struggle to build up its political independence, which is an essential step for any major revolutionary undertakings. The social- democratic and revisionist forces are performing a key service to the bourgeoisie in their efforts to tie the workers to bourgeois-reformist politics and to hold in check the workers' revolt against the capitalist offensive. At the same time, real life is compelling the proletariat towards political independence and the barricades of the class struggle. The crisis and the deepening of the capitalist offensive is creating fertile soil for the growth of the revolutionary movement and is preparing the ground for revolutionary outbreaks.

In the dependent countries the revolutionary upheaval has engulfed a number of countries already. From Central America to Southern Africa, from the Philippines to the Middle East, the revolutionary struggles of the masses are shaking old strongholds of imperialism. A series of entrenched dictatorships are reeling under the blows of the working people (Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, the Philippines, etc.). In their strikes and demonstrations, in their armed resistance and revolutionary wars, the workers and oppressed are rising to their feet against the blood- drenched tyrants, fascists and racists and the double exploitation and oppression they suffer under the yoke of imperialism and the local exploiting classes.

The revolutionary movement in these countries also faces many obstacles and is also developing unevenly. Besides the reactionary terror of imperialism and the ruling classes, the revolutionary and liberation movements must overcome the undermining role of liberalism, national reformism and other anti-revolutionary political trends. In general the movements suffer from a lack of the organization and revolutionary consistency that only the leadership of the masses by the proletariat and its political party can provide. The deepening of the revolutionary crises in these countries is opening the way for the workers and exploited masses to overcome these obstacles and to carry forward their revolutionary struggles.

The revolutions that have broken out in a number of countries and the strikes and protests throughout the capitalist world all show that the workers and downtrodden everywhere are seeking a way out of the oppression and misery of capitalism and imperialism. They are all signs of the looming revolutionary storms that are building up on a global scale.

The international proletariat stands at the hub of this world revolutionary process. Both in the imperialist heartlands and in the dependent countries, the revolutionary impulse of the working class is playing an ever more important role in the struggle in many countries.

The decisive thing is for the proletariat to be organized and mobilized as an independent class force at the head of all the exploited and oppressed. The degree to which this is accomplished will determine the fighting strength of the revolutionary battles against the capitalist drive of hunger, fascism, imperialist slavery and war. It will determine whether the revolutionary struggles stop half way only to be betrayed, or are carried through to the emancipation of the working masses.

Thus, in the face of the world capitalist offensive great responsibilities must be shouldered by the class conscious workers and revolutionaries. Much work is needed to arm the masses with revolutionary consciousness and to equip them with the diverse forms of organization required for the complex and difficult struggles that they face. The most crucial task of all is the building and strengthening of the political parties of the proletariat, the Marxist-Leninist communist parties. The proletarian vanguards are the essential tool for organizing the working class. Only through building the proletarian political party can the working class achieve true independence of the capitalist parties, take the lead of all the working masses, and march forward determinedly to the accomplishment of its historical mission -- the triumph of the new world of socialism.

B. Solidarity With the Workers and Peasants of Central America

A revolutionary storm is sweeping Central America. This is a major world development. The revolutionary struggles of the working people of that region demand the closest attention and solidarity of the American class conscious workers and revolutionary activists.

Since their triumph over the Somoza dictatorship, the Nicaraguan workers and peasants have continued their battle to defeat the CIA-organized counter-revolution. The toiling masses of El Salvador are strengthening their liberation war against the U.S.-puppet "death squad" regime. The fascist butchers in Guatemala have failed to put out the fires of the popular insurgency. And the Honduran generals are trembling at the growing signs that the Honduran people, too, are joining the revolutionary battle. In short, Central America is ablaze.

The poverty-stricken workers and peasants of Central America are rising to their feet. They are fighting against brutal exploitation at the hands of the rich capitalists and landlords and the U.S. multinational corporations. They are fighting against decades of fascist tyranny and the U.S. imperialist jackboot.

In the face of the revolutionary wave, the U.S. imperialists are sliding into the quagmire of military intervention. They have dispatched their gunboats, troops, Green Beret "advisors," CIA operatives and hundreds of millions of dollars of military hardware. Their mission is to prop up the bloodstained despots at all costs and to crush the workers and peasants. As the revolutionary forces grow stronger and the U.S.-backed reactionary forces continue to disintegrate, the logic of U.S. intervention is step by step escalation into a full-scale Viet Nam-type war against the Central American peoples.

This brutal U.S. intervention is but the last in an unbroken chain of U.S. invasions and interventions against the Latin American peoples over the last century and more. It is the imperialist drive for profits that today motivates the brutal U.S. invasion of Grenada and the U.S. intervention against the Central American peoples. In the past it was this same imperialist drive that unleashed the CIA to topple the reformist Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954, that dispatched the marines to crush the popular revolt in the Dominican Republic in 1965, and that organized the 1973 fascist coup in Chile. In Central America today, U.S. imperialism is once again showing its hand as the hangman of the Latin American peoples.

To cover its bloody tracks, the U.S. government spokesmen portray the Central American conflict as one between the two superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union. They hypocritically lie that the revolutionary forces have been foreign-inspired and created by the revisionist Soviet Union and Cuba. In reality, the continuous struggles of the Central American peoples against the oligarchs and U.S. interventionists go back to before Castro was even born. In reality, it is the tottering dictatorships and CIA mercenaries who survive at the grace of the U.S. imperialists, while it is the revolutionary forces that grow strong because they have the backing of the Central American workers and peasants.

As for the Soviet and Cuban revisionists, they are false friends of the liberation struggles in Central America; far from being real supporters of the revolutionary movement, the revisionists in Havana and Moscow seek to put brakes on the struggles of the workers and peasants and urge them to seek accommodation with U.S. imperialism and the local capitalists and reactionaries of Central America.

Yankee imperialism has always considered Central America as part of its "back yard," as its private preserve of exploitation and tutelage. But today this "back yard" is burning bright with the fires of revolution and anti-U.S. imperialist struggle. This is a factor for revolutionizing the whole Latin American and Caribbean region. From Mexico City to Santiago, Chile, from Santo Domingo to Sao Paulo, Brazil, a powder keg of revolt is building up against poverty and exploitation, the reactionary regimes and U.S. imperialist oppression. The revolutionary upheaval in Central America and the growing U.S. intervention there will also have a growing impact on the Latino people in the U.S. and on the American working people as a whole who have close ties with their Latin American class brothers.

The American proletariat must make every effort to build up a common revolutionary front with the peoples of Central America. This means working hard to strengthen the mass struggles against U.S. imperialist intervention. The Central American peoples must have the right to self- determination. And it means working hard for militant solidarity with the revolutionary struggles of the Central American workers and peasants. Every step forward by the revolutionary movement in Central America is a blow to "our own" imperialist ruling class and a step forward for our revolutionary cause.

Solidarity with the Salvadoran People's Liberation Struggle

Step by step the Reagan government is expanding U.S. military intervention in El Salvador. U.S. military officers are directing Viet Nam-style "search and destroy" missions, while hundreds of millions of dollars of war material is dispatched to the death squad dictatorship for its brutal war against the Salvadoran people.

But neither the furious terror against the population nor the growing U.S. intervention have succeeded in putting down the armed resistance of the workers and peasants. On the contrary, the liberation forces grow stronger day by day. They are demonstrating that the people are determined to carry their struggle through to the end. The toiling people, who have been starved and massacred, are determined to build a new life free of the fascist yoke of the big capitalists and landlords, and free from the plunder and dictate of U.S. imperialism.

The U.S. imperialists are striving to crush the Salvadoran people with machine guns and napalm. At the same time, under the signboard of "political solution," they are trying to undermine the liberation forces through maneuvers and lies. The "political solution" being put forward by the reactionary and pro-U.S. imperialist governments of the Contadora group (Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama), and which is backed by international social-democracy and by the Cuban and Soviet revisionists, is an imperialist trap. It is aimed at robbing the revolutionary forces of the initiative and, if possible, of their guns, in the face of the well- armed regime which rules by naked terror. It is aimed at negotiating a future for El Salvador according to what is acceptable to the U.S. imperialists, thus denying the Salvadoran people the elementary right to self-determination. Pacifist rhetoric about such a "political solution" is being used to cover up the deepening U.S. intervention. That is why it has the enthusiastic support of the liberal imperialist politicians of the Democratic Party. With sweet talk of "political solution" on their lips, the Democrats in Congress continue to rubber stamp every step of Reagan's escalation and to appropriate more and more funds for the U.S. war of extermination against the Salvadoran liberation forces.

The workers and peasants of El Salvador have shed too much blood to permit any reconciliation with the fascist tyranny. The only just solution possible in El Salvador is the victory of the exploited masses over the regime, the capitalist and landlord oligarchy and U.S. imperialism.

The American class conscious workers and revolutionary activists must strive to build the mass struggles to demand that U.S. imperialism get out of El Salvador, lock, stock and barrel. They must take a firm stand in solidarity with the Salvadoran working people in their courageous struggle for liberation.

Solidarity with the Nicaraguan People Against the CIA Invaders

U.S. imperialism is pulling out all of the weapons in its arsenal of destabilization -- economic blockade, subversion, threats and blackmail -- against the people of Nicaragua. Ten thousand CIA-armed and trained counterrevolutionaries are engaged in terror raids into Nicaraguan territory. U.S. warships and planes crowd the Nicaraguan coastline and airspace. And across the Nicaraguan border, Honduras has been turned into a base of U.S. aggression and a staging ground for several thousand U.S. troops in full battle gear.

The declared aim of the U.S. government policy is to strangle the Nicaraguan revolution. The objective is nothing short of restoring a Somoza-style dictatorship. For five decades the ruthless Somoza dynasty stood guard over the super-profits reaped by the U.S. multinationals from the misery of the Nicaraguan workers and peasants. At the cost of 50,000 martyrs the people finally liberated themselves from this U.S.-backed despotism in July, 1979. Now U.S. imperialism is seeking revenge for its loss and is striving to turn back the clock of history through armed counterrevolution. It is resorting to the same arrogant brutality that it showed in its repeated invasions and occupations of Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933 which put the Somoza tyranny in power in the first place. U.S. imperialism's war on Nicaragua is a monstrous crime against a small and valiant people.

For the downtrodden people of Nicaragua the revolution was a giant step forward. It has brought the workers and peasants their first taste of freedom. They are now showing that they are not about to give up what they have won at so much cost without a fight. Every new crime of the U.S. interventionists is strengthening the resolve of the aroused and armed people.

Contrary to the ravings of the imperialists, the Sandinista government that came to power in the revolution is not a Marxist-Leninist one. This is unfortunate because the revolution would be that much stronger if it were. Instead, the Sandinista government is weakly formed; and it is ideologically unclear, being influenced by various bourgeois, social-democratic and revisionist trends. Nevertheless the gains won by the working masses in the revolution are of tremendous value for advancing their revolutionary cause.

Therefore the U.S. imperialists must not be allowed to have their way. The American class conscious workers and revolutionary activists must strive to organize a vigorous mass struggle against the U.S. war on Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan people must have the freedom to decide their own fate. They must have the right to self-determination without the bullying, threats and dictate of U.S. imperialism.

At the same time, the American revolutionaries must give special support to the Marxist-Leninist forces of the Nicaraguan working class. These are the forces which are striving to carry the revolution forward to the realization of socialism, and which understand that only by the workers and exploited masses deepening the revolution can the immediate fight against the CIA-backed counter-revolution and the U.S. intervention be strengthened.

[Photo: Party supporters march in a Boston demonstration of 4,000 denouncing U.S. aggression against Nicaragua and the Salvadoran revolution.]

[Photo: Central America is ablaze with revolutionary struggle. Here the people's guerrillas organize a rally in Berlin, El Salvador.]

C. Against the Criminal U.S. Invasion of Grenada

The U.S. invasion of Grenada was an act of naked imperialism. It was another landmark in U.S. imperialism's criminal history of robbery and intervention against the peoples of the Caribbean and Central America. Grenada has been made another victim of U.S. imperialism's big stick policy of stepped-up aggression against the world's people.

Reagan's aims in ordering the invasion of Grenada were straightforward: to subjugate the Grenadian people and to rig up a puppet government under the U.S. jackboot. Every one of Reagan's lying justifications for this invasion only further expose it as an act of imperialist banditry.

The Reagan administration claims that the U.S. invasion was necessary to "rescue American citizens.'' It does not matter that the only real danger to the American students in Grenada came from the bullets and shells of the U.S. invaders. This is because "protecting American lives'' is a timeworn pretext, tattered by many decades of use, to justify U.S. military intervention against other countries, such as the 1965 U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic. From the standpoint of the U.S. imperialist marauders, the U.S. has the right to invade any country where Americans happen to be.

Reagan also argues that the U.S. invasion was needed to "restore democracy'' to Grenada. To ensure Reagan-style "democracy'' the Grenadian people have been put under U.S. military occupation. The U.S. occupiers are patching together a new puppet regime under the protection of the U.S. bayonets. The opponents and suspected opponents of the occupation have been thrown in prison camps. Public meetings have been banned and a tight lid placed on any political activities. The press is being overseen by psychological warfare units of the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division, which are also conducting, through radio broadcasts and handbills, a filthy anti-communist propaganda campaign against revolutionary,and progressive activists. Indeed, the U.S. invasion, the ferocious repression, and the efforts to rig up a new puppet government all provide a telling picture of what U.S. imperialist "democracy" and "freedom" are all about.

The Reagan regime also contends that the U.S. invasion was needed to "block Cuban military aggression." But all of its hysterical lies about the "Cuban threat" have been stripped naked. The alleged presence of "several Cuban divisions" has turned out to be 40 Cuban military advisors and a greater number of construction workers armed with rifles. Likewise, the reports of Cuban military bases in Grenada have been exposed as myth. The truth is that the Grenadian people faced aggression from no one save the U.S. imperialists. And the lie of protecting their victims from the aggression of others is just one more of U.S. imperialism's timeworn pretexts to justify U.S. imperialist conquest.

The real reason for the U.S. invasion of Grenada was to defend the U.S. imperialist empire. U.S. imperialism claims the whole Caribbean as an "American lake'' -- the peoples of the Caribbean be damned. It demands total subservience to the U.S. dictate. Because the Grenadian government wasn't to its liking, U.S. imperialism thought nothing of invading, crushing the government, hunting down the revolutionary workers and youth, and rigging up a new quisling government to do its bidding.

The new government being pieced together under Sir Paul Scoon is just the type of government U.S. imperialism demands. Scoon is a long-proven lackey of imperialism. He is the representative of the British Crown. He was a stalwart of the former pro-U.S. dictator Eric Gairy, who kept himself in power until 1979 by murdering his opponents. An international search is underway to find other former Gairy officials and other hated reactionaries to form the new pro- U.S. government. The pro-imperialist and reactionary governments of the neighboring Commonwealth countries, which dispatched troops to accompany the U.S. Marines, are now assisting the U.S. troops to trample on the Grenadian masses and to organize and train the police and army for the Scoon government. Meanwhile, Sir Scoon has already expressed eagerness for the Pentagon's plans to build a U.S. military base on the island.

For two years the Pentagon had been planning and practicing for an invasion of Grenada to topple Maurice Bishop's New Jewel Movement government. Contrary to the ravings of Reagan, the Bishop government was not a Marxist-Leninist or revolutionary one. Bishop came to power with the ousting of the brutal dictator Eric Gairy in 1979. Bishop's NJM government carried out some limited social reforms and brought Grenada out of the dark years of the Gairy regime; this gained it popular backing. But it remained a bourgeois nationalist government of the Grenadian capitalists; it remained a government which protected the interests of the local capitalists and landlords, as well as the U.S. and other foreign imperialist interests on the island. Nevertheless, the mild reformism of the Bishop government angered U.S. imperialism, which sought the return of a government of outright reaction.

The Bishop government resisted the bullying and blackmail of first Carter and then Reagan. Hoping to strengthen his hand by balancing between the imperialist powers and blocs, Bishop expanded Grenada's ties with the Soviet Union and Cuba, as well as with other capitalist and revisionist countries. Moreover, despite its "anti-U.S. imperialist'' rhetoric, the Bishop government repeatedly made offerings towards reconciliation and close relations with U.S. imperialism. Carter and Reagan turned down these offerings, demanding complete obedience to the U.S. imperialist baton.

It appears that the program of the NJM leaders who overthrew and murdered Bishop was essentially no different than Bishop's program. But U.S. imperialism seized on the power struggle within the NJM and the coup d'etat to put into effect its long-planned invasion and to subjugate the country.

The capitalist and conciliatory nature of the NJM government proved to be no obstacle to U.S. imperialist aggression. The U.S. invasion showed that the U.S. imperialists will display no mercy towards even bourgeois liberal regimes that are not sufficiently subservient to the U.S. dictate, just as they used the CIA in the past to overthrow such a liberal bourgeois government as that of Arbenz in Guatemala.

The U.S. invasion of Grenada was supposed to be a message to the Nicaraguan people or any other peoples in the region who refuse to go down on their knees before the U.S. overlords. To make their point the U.S. invaders hurled 20 warships and some 20,000 troops against Grenada. Just one of the huge American ships carried more men and a thousand times more firepower than the entire 2,000-man Grenadian army, which had only light arms and no navy or air force at all. Even so, the heroic resistance of the defenders shocked and frightened the crack U.S. troops. Of course, the situation would have been that much more difficult for the invaders if the political situation in Grenada had not been so confused by the coup d'etat.

The criminal U.S. invasion of Grenada once again showed up the spinelessness and hypocrisy of the Democratic Party "opposition'' to the Reaganite warmakers. The Democratic leadership was briefed beforehand about the invasion plans but refused to lift a finger against them. Afterwards, a number of Democratic Party chiefs expressed "doubts" about the invasion, only to later reconsider and come around to Reagan's point of view. A handful of liberal Democrats have continued to mildly protest that U.S. imperialist objectives in Grenada could have been better realized through a peaceful reconciliation. However, these Democratic "doves" are not demanding that the U.S. imperialist forces get out of Grenada. Rather they are wringing their hands about the need for more "Congressional oversight" in foreign policy, as if Reagan's big stick policy of aggression and war didn't enjoy the loyal and bipartisan support of the capitalist flunkeys who sit in the Congress.

The invasion of Grenada shows that U.S. imperialism respects nothing but force. It lives by the law of the jungle. It glories in marauding over other countries, toppling governments, and imposing its dictate on others. From Grenada to Lebanon to Central America, U.S. troops are trampling on the masses.

There can be no place for illusions in a system that brutally invades other countries. In fighting U.S. imperialist aggression there can be no faith in Congress or the Constitution or the United Nations Charter. Only the revolutionary struggles of the workers and oppressed, both at home and abroad, can strike hard blows against this imperialist beast.

Class conscious workers and anti-imperialist activists have taken to the streets in protest of the criminal invasion of Grenada. This must be carried through with resolute opposition to the U.S. military occupation, to the repression against the Grenadian masses, and to the schemes to rig up a pro-U.S. puppet government. The Grenadian people must have the right to self-determination, the right to decide their own affairs free of the U.S. jackboot. The American workers must extend their solidarity to the revolutionary working people and youth of Grenada who have not and will not give up their struggle for a better world, for liberation from imperialist slavery.

[Photo: 2,500 people march in San Francisco on October 29, 1983 in a militant demonstration against the invasion of Grenada.]

D. Salute the Chilean Workers and Youth in Struggle Against the Fascist Pinochet

Across Latin America, the working people are on the march against exploitation, reaction and imperialist oppression. The most entrenched fascist dictatorships, which have ruled in a number of countries for years and years, are being shaken by the waves of popular struggle.

The situation in Chile offers a stirring example of this growing revolt of the working people.

Ten years ago, the CIA, the American multinational corporations and the Chilean bourgeoisie installed the military regime of General Augusto Pinochet through a bloody coup d'etat against the reformist Popular Unity coalition government of Salvador Allende. The Pinochet regime, right from the outset, became a world renowned symbol of the most brutal fascist tyranny. Over the years, it has murdered over 30,000 people and forced a million Chileans, ten percent of the population, to leave the country.

The workers and youth of Chile never reconciled themselves to this savage oppression. Throughout the last decade, skirmishes and battles broke out repeatedly between the Chilean resistance and the fascists. This year has seen the emergence of a powerful nationwide mass upsurge against the military dictatorship. Since the early months of this year the people have been defiantly pouring into the streets in protest. A variety of struggles by workers, students and the urban poor are breaking out almost every day. Pinochet has met the mass protests with his characteristic repression, but the Chilean people have not been intimidated.

In their mass struggles today, the Chilean workers are not only demanding an end to the military dictatorship but they are also fighting for bread and work. The Chilean economy is gripped by a grave depression. The people suffer from massive unemployment and ever growing inflation. Like the other debt-ridden regimes of the continent, the military regime has saddled the masses with one austerity measure after another.

The economic crisis in Chile is a sharp indictment of the reactionary economic policies advocated by Reaganism. For years, the Reaganite ideologues, and the right-wing economists of the "Chicago school" of Milton Friedman, who advised Pinochet's government, promoted the "Chilean miracle" as a great example of the wonders of "free enterprise." Years before Reagan got into the White House, Chile was being depicted as a showcase of Reaganomics in action.

Under these policies, Chile was opened wide up for ruthless exploitation by the imperialist monopolies and the Chilean capitalists, without even the weak regulations and social programs which are customary in many capitalist economies. These policies could only be implemented because the resistance of the workers was kept in check through the naked terror of fascism. But the "Chilean miracle" was very short-lived. Soon the balloon burst, due to its own internal contradictions and the effects of the world capitalist crisis.

The mass upsurge sweeping across Chile today is a welcome development. It signals to the working people across the continent that even such a ferocious regime as that of Pinochet cannot crush underfoot the fighting spirit of the exploited masses.

But even as the struggle of the Chilean masses gathers strength, it faces major obstacles in its path. While the workers and youth are shedding their blood and filling the prisons, the Chilean bourgeoisie is preparing to steal the fruits of the struggle away from the toilers.

The Chilean bourgeoisie is afraid that the anti-fascist struggle of the masses will grow into a revolution; it fears the revolutionary overthrow of Pinochet because it wants to preserve various means of holding the working masses down and because it fears that the mass upsurge may open the way to a challenge to the rule of the bourgeoisie itself. Therefore a bourgeois liberal opposition has been knocked together, led by the Christian Democratic Party, to mislead the political opposition to the Pinochet regime. These liberals are thoroughly reactionary; they helped prepare the way for the 1973 military coup and for years continued to give support to the Pinochet regime. The liberal opposition seeks to bring to power a "moderate" bourgeois regime by making a deal with Pinochet himself, or with other generals in the military high command. They also seek the help of U.S. imperialism, with which they maintain close ties. For its part, the U.S. government, while continuing to back the fascist Pinochet regime to the hilt, is also keeping a finger in the liberal pie in case Pinochet has to be replaced.

But the workers of Chile are not fighting for a compromise with the generals; they seek to uproot the fascist tyranny. The workers of Chile want an end to hunger and misery. This requires carrying forward the struggles of today into the socialist revolution. The Chilean workers have been striving for socialism for a long time. The mass upsurge of the working people in that country today is a promising development towards building up the forces for revolution.

The class conscious workers and revolutionaries in the U.S. have long sympathized with and closely followed the resistance of the Chilean masses against the fascist Pinochet. They have fervently condemned the terrible crimes organized in that country by U.S. imperialism and its henchmen. Today the progressive people of the U.S. warmly welcome the blows the Chilean people are striking against Pinochet's regime, this hated symbol of U.S. imperialist- backed tyranny.

E. U.S. and Israeli Occupiers, Get Out of Lebanon

In the summer of 1982, the Israeli Zionists, with the full backing of the U.S. government, launched their brutal invasion of Lebanon. The wanton death and destruction unleashed against the Palestinian and Lebanese civilian population there was a demonstration to the whole world of the aggressive barbarism of zionism and imperialism.

The aims of the U.S.-backed Israeli invasion were threefold. First, the invasion was to bring a "final solution" to the Palestinian problem. By driving the Palestinian liberation fighters out of Lebanon and by terrorizing and massacring the civilian refugees, the Zionists hoped to break the back of the Palestinian resistance. Second, the Zionists hoped to realize their long-cherished goal of annexing southern Lebanon. And finally, under the bayonets of occupation, the U.S. imperialists and Israeli Zionists hoped to rig up a puppet central government under the hegemony of the fascist Phalange.

But instead of the lightning victory that they had hoped for, the Zionists and imperialists are bogged down in the Lebanese quagmire. The Israeli occupiers continue to suffer losses at the hands of the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance. The fascist Gemayal regime is crumbling under the armed blows of the downtrodden masses. To prop up the Phalange dictatorship, the U.S. Marines and the other so- called "peacekeeping" troops from imperialist France, Britain and Italy are step by step committing themselves to a long and bloody war against the Lebanese people.

The shelling of the Lebanese people by U.S. battleships and artillery has given the lie to the claims that the U.S. troops are only playing a "peacekeeping" role. In reality they are imperialist occupation troops backing up a bloodstained regime that will never be accepted by the Lebanese people. Once again U.S. imperialism is playing the dirty role of world policeman. Reagan has dispatched the marines with the full backing of both the Republican "hawks" and the Democratic "doves" in Congress. This military adventure is another crime of U.S. imperialism's bipartisan policy of intervention and war to safeguard its oil super-profits and other "vital interests."

The conflict in Lebanon is demonstrating the enormous resilience of the toiling and oppressed masses. Despite the overwhelming military force and the ruthless brutality of the occupiers and the Phalangist quislings, the people's resistance remains unbroken and repeatedly comes back stronger and' stronger. The Lebanese and Palestinian liberation forces have huge obstacles arrayed against them. They face the warships and tanks of the imperialists and Zionists. They face the backstabbing and sabotage of the Syrian government and the other regimes of the Arab exploiters. And they must also overcome the reformism and vacillations that afflict the leaderships of their own liberation movements. Nevertheless, despite all odds, the popular resistance is continuing to strike hard blows at the fascist regime, the Israeli annexationists and the occupation troops of the U.S. and other imperialists.

The American class conscious workers and revolutionaries salute the brave struggles of the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance. The Israeli Zionists, the U.S. occupation forces and the other "peacekeeping" forces must get out of Lebanon.

[Photo: The bloody U.S.-backed Israeli aggression in Lebanon outraged progressive people around the world. Thousands took to the streets in cities throughout the U.S., as in this protest march in San Francisco, July 17, 1982.]

F. The Racist Regime of Israeli Zionism and the Palestinian Revolution

Israeli Zionism is racism in the service of imperialism. This reality was again brought home to the world by the countless thousands of civilian victims of Israeli bombs in the Palestinian refugee camps and the crowded neighborhoods of Beirut; by the Israeli organization of the massacres of Sabra and Shatila; and by all the other atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli invasion forces in Lebanon. And it is being brought home every day by the shameful brutality of the Israeli occupiers against the Palestinians on the West Bank.

The invasion of Lebanon and the occupation of the West Bank are not some mistaken policies of some over-zealous leaders, but stem from the very nature of the zionist regime.

Zionism has never been synonymous with the Jewish people, as the Zionists would like the world to believe. In fact the zionist political movement only emerged over the last century. In the face of anti-Semitic oppression, zionism preached that the only salvation for the Jewish people was to separate themselves off in an exclusively Jewish "homeland." For decades zionism had little influence among the masses of Jewish working people, large numbers of whom recognized that their emancipation was bound up with the revolutionary working class movement of which they were part. Today, many Jews who have been taken in by the zionist propaganda are having their eyes opened to the reality of zionism: that it is a reactionary separatist doctrine that justifies submission of the Jewish working masses to Western imperialism and the Jewish bourgeoisie, and that it is a thoroughly racist doctrine that justifies the worst crimes against the Arab peoples.

With the backing of the British and other imperialists, the zionist movement set about the task of creating a zionist "homeland." Eventually the territory of Palestine was chosen as the site of the future zionist regime. This was to be realized despite the fact that for many centuries back this land had a Palestinian Arab majority. Thus, zionist Israel was founded on the terroristic expulsion and uprooting of the Palestinians and on condemning those who remained to the status of virtual prisoners in their own homeland. Under zionist rule the Palestinians face systematic racial discrimination and have been reduced to third class citizens stripped of all rights. On the West Bank and Gaza the Palestinians live under the jackboot of military occupation. And in the refugee camps in the neighboring countries the Palestinians live in desperate poverty, without land or work.

The zionist terror against the Arab people has not been confined to Palestine, but it has repeatedly spilled into aggression and annexationist wars against the neighboring Arab peoples. The zionist state was imposed by the force of arms upon the native Arabs, who have never reconciled themselves to this racist regime. This has meant a perpetual state of war under which the zionist war machine has launched its preventive strikes and retaliatory invasions, conquering ever more Arab territories. It has meant that, for its size, Israel is the most militarized country on earth, armed to the teeth with billions of dollars of U.S. weapons.

U.S. imperialism wields the zionist war machine as a knife at the throat of the Arab peoples. Zionist Israel was set up as a base of imperialist aggression, and it remains a key outpost of U.S. imperialism in the region. The peoples of the Middle East face the enslaving drive of U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism and the other imperialist big powers to plunder Arab oil reserves and grab strategic positions. In this context, zionist Israel is a bloodstained dagger of aggression, threats and blackmail protecting U.S. imperialism's oil profits and other "vital interests."

The hand of the zionist war machine also extends beyond the Middle East. Zionist Israel is taking an active role in the U.S. intervention in Central America, where it is arming and training the troops and death squads of the fascist dictatorships. Israel is also closely allied to other racist and fascist causes around the world. It has a close partnership with its racist counterparts in the South African apartheid regime.

The zionist regime cannot be straightened out with reforms or a "human rights" facelift. It must be overthrown through revolution and a democratic Palestine must be built in its place. This is the aspiration that the nearly five million Palestinians will never relinquish. The Jewish workers and progressive people will also increasingly take up the demand for a democratic Palestine as they grow ever more conscious of the nature of Israeli rule and commit themselves to a decided break with zionism.

A democratic Palestine means the restoration of Palestinian national rights. It means the liberation of the Palestinians being crushed under the military jackboot of the Israeli occupiers and the return of the refugees uprooted by zionist terror to their homeland. It means a secular Palestine where every inhabitant, without regard to race or religion, whether Arab or Jew, enjoys equal rights. It means a Palestine which can no longer be used as a weapon in the hands of U.S. imperialism against the Arab peoples. The creation of a democratic Palestine means putting a stop once and for all to the zionist war machine of aggression and conquest.

Such a democratic Palestine is the goal of the Palestinian liberation movement. This liberation struggle faces enormous challenges. It confronts a ruthless regime that is backed to the hilt by U.S. imperialism. It must maintain constant vigilance against the treachery of the Arab governments of the exploiters and reactionaries. And to advance it must overcome the national reformist policy that is presently being pursued by various leaders of the Palestinian liberation movement. This policy seeks to reduce the struggle to a reformist compromise with the zionist regime, a compromise to be achieved through the diplomacy of the bourgeois and reactionary Arab governments, and through wheeling and dealing with the imperialist superpowers.

Despite all the genocidal terror of the Zionists and all the other obstacles, the Palestinian people and their liberation struggle have never been broken. The Palestinian revolution has always come back to strike hard blows upon zionism and imperialism. The heroic resistance of the Palestinian and Lebanese fighters against the Israeli occupiers in Lebanon and the ongoing struggles of the brave youth on the West Bank are major factors contributing to the great crisis and disintegration gripping Israeli zionist society. Through revolutionary struggle the Palestinian toilers and oppressed are bound to realize their objective of a democratic Palestine on the road to their complete emancipation.

The American class conscious workers and revolutionaries must stand firmly on the side of the Palestinian liberation movement. They must strive to build up the mass struggle here in the U.S. in solidarity with the struggles of the Palestinian and other Arab peoples against the U.S. imperialist and Israeli zionist aggressors.

[Photo: Brave Palestinian youth hurling rocks at heavily armed Israeli troops on the West Bank.]

G. In Support of the Black People of South Africa Against the Racist Apartheid Regime

The white racist regime of South Africa is a fortress of imperialist slavery on the African continent. South African apartheid reveals the depths of racist barbarism that capitalist imperialism resorts to in its drive for profits.

The apartheid system has reduced the black Africans, the overwhelming majority of the population, to the status of convict prisoners in their own land. They have been stripped of all political and social rights. The only right they have is to slave on the edge of starvation in the mines and on the assembly lines of the racist capitalist masters. Apartheid rule condemns the blacks to impoverished ghettoes. And it drives them into the barren wastelands called "homelands" or "bantustans," declaring the blacks foreign aliens in their own native South Africa.

The apartheid regime oppresses the entire non-white population in South Africa. It enforces a system of official segregation and discrimination against not only the blacks but also those whom it classifies as Indians and coloreds. The black people suffer the most ferocious oppression, and the fate of all the racially oppressed masses and progressive whites is linked with the liberation of the black majority.

Every act of protest against this inhuman system is met by the police truncheon and bullet. Every opponent who takes a stand against apartheid does so at the risk of prison, torture and the hangman's gallows. The white racist regime keeps itself in power through naked terror against the black majority and against opponents of all races.

The Pretoria regime also plays the role of fascist gendarme well beyond its borders. It continues its colonial occupation of Namibia and its ruthless war against the Namibian people's liberation struggle. It launches repeated terror raids and other acts of aggression against the other countries of southern Africa. And the tentacles of apartheid reach out to racist and fascist causes all over the world. Among its closest friends is zionist Israel, whose racist system of bigotry and terror against the native Palestinian Arabs has many things in common with apartheid.

The apartheid system is a source of handsome profits for the U.S., British and other imperialist monopolies. That is why the governments of these pillars of "democracy and freedom" caress this racist beast with such loving tenderness. In the last century these same capitalist powers were still growing fat off of black slavery and to this day enforce their own systems of institutional racism. No wonder that they should so closely embrace the apartheid slave masters.

Despite all its armed might, despite all of the backing it gets from the Reagans and Thatchers of this world, South African apartheid is headed for collapse. The waves of revolt among the people are building up stronger and stronger. Despite the prison-like conditions under which it survives, the South African proletariat is building up its organizations and beginning to flex its powerful limbs. It is only a matter of time before the working class and downtrodden people of South Africa rise to their feet and smash the racist minority regime to smithereens.

Like the working people everywhere, the American working class and progressive people abhor South African apartheid. They also abhor the stand of the U.S. government and the U.S. corporations which prop up this racist system. To deflect the popular outrage, the U.S. State Department, along with Ford, General Motors and others who make big profits from apartheid, are trying to paint up white minority rule with a light dusting of cosmetic "reforms." But these efforts only go to show their dedication to propping up the apartheid system forever.

The American class conscious workers and revolutionary activists stand in solidarity with the courageous South African workers and youth in their struggle for the total destruction of apartheid and minority rule. This is the immediate and essential first step towards their complete emancipation.

H. In Support of the Filipino People's Struggle Against the U.S.-Marcos Dictatorship

A revolutionary crisis is unfolding in the Philippines. The U.S.-backed Marcos dictatorship is being pounded on all sides. In the cities the protests and street fighting against the dictatorship have brought millions into the struggle. In the countryside the revolutionary insurgency is growing stronger and stronger. Deep rifts are emerging within the ranks of the big capitalist and landlord ruling class and the Marcos regime is reeling from the hard blows of the masses.

The threatened collapse of the Marcos tyranny would be a heavy loss to U.S. imperialism. For more than a decade the U.S. government has propped up this fascist despot to guard U.S. imperialism's major interests in the Philippines. The huge Subic Bay naval facility and the Clark air base play a big role in the U.S. military presence in East Asia and the Pacific. U.S. multinational corporations make fat profits off of the poverty and labor of the Filipino workers and peasants and the plunder of their country's rich natural resources. For the first half of this century, U.S. imperialism held the Philippines as its colonial property. Since the end of World War II, it has kept its claws deep in the flesh of the Filipino people in the form of neo-colonial privileges enforced by the reactionary rule of the Filipino oligarchy and corrupt despots of the likes of Marcos.

The Filipino people have a glorious tradition of revolutionary struggle against this plunder and tyranny. Today the working masses are knocking on the door of liberation. To rob the people of the fruits of their struggle, U.S. imperialism, while backing Marcos to the hilt, is also grooming the liberal bourgeois opposition in the wings. To rescue the dictatorship the U.S. State Department hopes that a compromise can be struck between the liberals and Marcos. Or, if this fails to stem the tide of mass struggle, it hopes to replace Marcos with a pro-U.S. imperialist and liberal- sounding politician from the Filipino oligarchy of big capitalists and landlords. The revolutionary forces must be vigilant against such a maneuver and mobilize the workers and peasants to carry their struggle against the tyranny of big exploiters and U.S. imperialism through to the end.

While the Philippines is on the other side of the world, close ties have been forged between the American and the Filipino working masses. The class conscious workers and revolutionaries of the U.S. salute the Filipino people in their revolutionary struggle against the U.S.-Marcos dictatorship and for their complete liberation.

I. The Crisis of the Polish Capitalist Regime Exposes the Bankruptcy of Revisionism

All the revisionist countries, Russia, China, Yugoslavia and the others, are gripped by profound crises. The continuing economic and political crisis in Poland offers a graphic example of the disaster which revisionist capitalism brings to the working people.

In Poland the economy is in a shambles. The country is saddled with an astronomical debt to foreign bankers. The workers face constant food shortages and prices are always spiralling upwards. Speedup and overwork are the lot of the workers.

The Polish workers have repeatedly risen up in strikes and protests against these conditions. This struggle has led to a political crisis for the revisionist rulers, which they have been unable to solve. The government has hit the workers with more and more repression. Every act of protest is met with water cannons, tear gas, clubs and arrests. In 1981, martial law was declared and widespread attacks were launched against the masses. Today, while martial law has been officially lifted, a multitude of emergency laws continue to keep a tight rein over the workers. Meanwhile, there is always the threat of intervention from the Soviet social-imperialists, who want to make sure that their domination over Poland is not challenged.

The apologists of capitalism, including Reagan and the AFL-CIO chieftains, all seize upon the problems facing Poland to slander socialism. To this, the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists reply: No, the crisis in Poland is not the outcome of socialism; the diseases afflicting Poland are typically capitalist diseases. Such diseases are found in Poland and the other revisionist countries precisely because they are capitalist societies.

There was a time when things were different in Poland. After World War II and the liberation of Poland from the nazis, Poland went through a series of radical social transformations. The rule of the old ruling class of big capitalists and landlords was broken. The country was rebuilt from the incredible devastation and mass murders carried out by the Hitlerite occupiers. In a few years, Poland became a modern industrial country. Such were the fruits of the path towards socialism which Poland had embarked on. But revisionism corroded the situation in Poland; by the mid- 1950's the Polish leaders ardently embraced Khrushchovite revisionism and systematized their plans to rig up a revisionist capitalist system in the country. The present rulers of Poland speak in the name of socialism and Marxism-Leninism, but they are really traitors to the workers' cause. They have long betrayed Marxism-Leninism.

Poland's capitalist nature is sharply shown by the fact that the country is in deep debt to the international bankers of Wall Street, West Germany, etc. This is just like the capitalist economies of Argentina, Brazil, Turkey, etc., which are also in hock to the imperialist bankers. And like these other places, the tribute paid to the bankers comes from the sweat of the working people. The workers of Poland have to do without in order that the bankers abroad can make fatter and fatter profits.

Poland is integrated into the world capitalist system because internally capitalism prevails there. The economy is run to make profits. Besides the tribute which goes to the Western bankers and to the Soviet social-imperialist overlords, the fruits of the Polish workers' labor also goes to enrich the Polish bourgeoisie. The Polish ruling class is a capitalist ruling class, made up of bureaucrats who run the state-owned sector of the economy and private businessmen and rich farmers, who control a sizeable privately owned sector in agriculture, trade, etc.

The way out of the crisis in Poland lies with the working class. Through their revolts and other struggles against the revisionists, the Polish workers have built up a courageous record of struggle. They showed the great power in their hands when, in 1980, they smashed the official trade unions which had become a noose around their necks.

But the Polish workers face a difficult situation in their fight. On the one hand, they face a hated dictatorial regime which is backed up by Soviet tanks. On the other hand, the Polish workers are faced by a situation in which the Western imperialists, who already make fat profits off Poland, want even more. The Western imperialists want to bring Poland into their sphere of influence.

In order to carry out its aims, Western imperialism not only applies direct pressure on the Polish revisionist regime but also manipulates a number of sectors of the opposition who seek a closer accommodation with Western imperialism. This includes the Catholic church establishment and the leaders of the now banned Solidarity trade union. The Archbishop Glemps and the Lech Walesas have influence among the workers but they are really against the real interests of the Polish working class. They hide from the workers that it is capitalism which is the enemy. They are self-proclaimed lovers of Reagan. They have no sympathy with the struggles of the workers in the capitalist West. They are only working to subordinate the workers' movement to dance to the tune of Reagan, West German Chancellor Kohl, the Pope and Western imperialist reaction generally.

The class conscious workers and revolutionaries of the U.S. have great sympathy for the struggle of the Polish workers. But living under the rule of the American imperialists, we know from close experience that the Reagans, the Kirklands, etc., who claim to be for the workers in Poland, are enemies of the working people everywhere. The workers of Poland will find their liberation, not by following those who love Reagan and the AFL-CIO chieftains, but by taking the road of class struggle against both revisionism and capitalism. Emancipation for the Polish workers requires a proletarian socialist revolution.

J. On the Revolutionary Struggle in the Oppressed and Dependent Countries: The National Liberation Movement, the Democratic Revolution and the Socialist Revolution

The struggle of the workers and peasants of the dependent and oppressed countries against imperialist domination is one of the powerful revolutionary currents of our era. Time and time again, oppressed peoples have risen up in their millions to cast off the shackles of colonialism and imperialist domination. These struggles have shaken the imperialist system to its very foundations. This revolutionary current includes both national liberation struggles and a variety of revolutionary movements in the oppressed countries, movements which face both the local rulers and the imperialist overlords who stand behind them.

The national liberation struggle is a dramatic illustration of the power of the revolutionary movement in the oppressed and dependent countries. The sight of colonies rising up under the most oppressive conditions to free themselves from the imperialist metropolises is an inspiring one. Often the entire current of revolutionary struggles in the oppressed and dependent countries is referred to as the national liberation movement. This is because imperialism maintains indirect forms of domination as well as direct, it subjugates formally independent states as well as colonies, and because the revolutionary movements of the oppressed peoples are never free of the threat of various forms of imperialist intervention. Nevertheless, precisely speaking, national liberation struggle is only one form of the revolutionary movement in the oppressed and dependent countries. The awakening of the peoples of the oppressed and dependent countries also involves a series of other liberating movements, from the democratic revolution against feudalism and despotism of various sorts, to the socialist revolution which alone can bring emancipation from all forms of exploitation and oppression.

Decades ago, Lenin pointed out: "social revolution can come only in the form of an epoch in which are combined civil war by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie in the advanced countries and a whole series of democratic and revolutionary movements, including the national liberation movement, in the undeveloped, backward and oppressed countries." (Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 60) The liberation movement of the oppressed peoples and the proletarian struggle for socialism together form a single revolutionary front against imperialism. The events of recent years, such as the revolutionary wars which defeated U.S. imperialism in Indochina, the liberation of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa, the revolutionary uprising which toppled the Shah in Iran, and the fire storm of struggle which has engulfed Central America, attest that the democratic and revolutionary movements of the oppressed peoples remain a major force of the contemporary world.

The Marxist-Leninist Party ardently supports the revolutionary movement of the oppressed peoples. We lay special stress on supporting those struggles which are directed against the domination and exploitation by "our own" U.S. imperialists. Supporting the liberation movement of the oppressed peoples is indispensable for any real struggle of the American working class against "its own" bourgeoisie, whose imperialist claws and "vital interests" stretch all around the world. And to support the struggle of the oppressed peoples must mean, in the final analysis, to work wholeheartedly for the victory of the socialist revolution here in the U.S., which will free the world of the piracy of U.S. imperialism once and for all time.

U.S. Imperialism: A World Exploiter

U.S. imperialism is an exploiter on a world scale. Following World War II, U.S. imperialism emerged as the strongest power of Western imperialism. Already a colonial power in the Caribbean and the Pacific, long entrenched in the position of overlord in Latin America, U.S. imperialism extended its armies and its financial tentacles throughout the world. Today, while enslaving the working class and oppressed nationalities within its own borders, U.S. imperialism dominates and exacts tribute from a far-flung empire of dependent countries and still reigns as the savage leader of the wolf pack of Western imperialist powers.

The U.S. imperialists realize fabulous profits through the economic subjugation of other countries. Through investments, loans, and "foreign aid," they export capital everywhere and exploit most of the world. U.S. multinational corporations have extended their operations to the far corners of the globe in search of cheap labor and raw materials and to create world monopolies. They command monopoly prices for their manufactured products and other goods, while driving down the prices they pay for the cash crops and ores which are the economic lifelines of many countries. The fat cat bankers of Wall Street make huge gains from usurious rates of interest on the debts forced on poorer countries to cover their bills for unequal trade and for importing capital.

This extraction of super-profits sucks the lifeblood out of the national economies of these countries. It retards their economic development and deepens their dependency and indebtedness. The burden of this falls on the workers and peasants, who stagger under a double yoke of exploitation. The coffers of Wall Street are filled by the hunger and misery of toilers in vast parts of the world.

Hand in glove with this economic subjugation to imperialism goes political dependency. U.S. imperialism props up the rule of the reactionary classes over the toilers of the dependent countries. It arms and trains their militaries, which are directly linked to the Pentagon. It binds them to itself through a staggering array of treaty organizations and other military and diplomatic alliances. The U.S. baton conducts their diplomatic affairs. The U.S. imperialists give themselves the right to organize coups d'etat and stage military interventions wherever they feel their interests are threatened. The dependent countries, although formally sovereign and independent, are reduced to tributaries of a world empire centered on Wall Street and the Pentagon.

This global empire is backed up by the worldwide presence of the U.S. armed forces and intelligence agencies. U.S. imperialism has ringed the globe with military bases to back up its plunder with force of arms. It has built up its Rapid Deployment Forces to intervene anywhere on an hour's notice. It has expropriated huge portions of land in other countries for military purposes. Everywhere, the U.S. embassies, U.S. Information Agency centers and other institutions are centers of espionage and intrigue.

The U.S. imperialists are prepared to go to any length to crush obstacles to their plunder. U.S. imperialism thought nothing of organizing a reactionary coup d'etat in Chile in 1973 on behalf of ITT and other big U.S. corporations. U.S. imperialism thought nothing of sending gunboats to Guatemala in 1954 to safeguard the landholdings of the United Fruit Company. U.S. imperialism thought nothing of invading the Dominican Republic in 1965 to safeguard business as usual there. U.S. imperialism thought nothing of drowning in blood the lives of 500,000 workers and peasants in Indonesia, then the largest oil producer in eastern Asia, in a coup in 1965 against the bourgeois nationalist government there. The decades-long U.S. aggression in Viet Nam, which claimed more than a million Vietnamese lives, shows the savagery of which U.S. imperialism is capable in defending its right to pillage and plunder on a world scale.

Today we see U.S. imperialism rapidly stepping up its military intervention in El Salvador. It is turning the economic and diplomatic screws on Nicaragua, while preparing an invasion and having CIA-sponsored counter-revolutionaries raid the country and commit atrocities against the population. In Lebanon, having backed the Israeli aggression to the hilt, the U.S. is now intervening as a "peacekeeping" force against the Lebanese and Palestinian popular forces, to complete the crimes which the Israeli Zionists began.

These events show that U.S. imperialism has not changed its nature. It remains a deadly enemy of the people. U.S. imperialism must be fought tooth and nail until it is in its grave and its vast neo-colonial empire a thing of the past.

Colonialism: The Enslavement of Peoples

Modern colonialism arose with the emergence of capitalism. Colonialism is the enslavement of peoples. Together with the slave trade, colonialism was a cornerstone of the development of capitalism. Colonialism brought untold suffering to the peoples it subjugated. It weighed down the toiling masses of the colonies with a terrible yoke of double exploitation. In the most brutal and painful way, colonialism introduced capitalism into much of the world and thereby planted the seeds of its own downfall.

Colonies of different types were established as armies from the capitalist metropolises marched across continents in wars of conquest. In some places, the colonial powers exterminated the original population and introduced their own surplus population and their own class relations. The U.S. and Canada are examples of countries that developed from colonies of this type. The settlers in such colonies had a relatively less painful path to development and independence than other colonies, but the native population was the victim of genocide. Elsewhere, in vast regions of the world, vanquished peoples were subjugated and despotic colonial regimes imposed on them. Colonial rule meant decade after decade of hunger, degradation, humiliation and bloody suppression for these peoples. Still elsewhere, the features of these two types of colonies were combined in the formation of various savage garrison states (South Africa, Israel, etc.). In all cases, colonialism established itself by fire and sword and revealed its ugly bloodstained features.

Colonialism embodied two distinct and contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, the burden of colonial domination was a crushing weight on the economic development of the colonies. The metropolitan bourgeoisie sought to make the colonies economic appendages of the respective capitalist metropolises. The colonies were a captive market and sources of raw materials and cheap labor. This relationship meant mutilating the economies of the colonies and retarding any independent development. Production of food crops generally went by the boards as agriculture was geared to production of cash crops for the world market. Domestic manufacture was crushed, providing a monopoly for imported goods. Heavy taxes were levied, through which the subjugated peoples were to bear the cost of their own subjugation. The consequences for the masses of toilers in the colonies were devastating. Destitution and hunger became hallmarks of colonial life.

On the other hand, the metropolitan bourgeoisie could not do this without introducing its own, capitalist, social relations into the colonies. Along with the production of cash crops for the world market, went the construction of railroads and ports. Along with the destruction of subsistent village economies went the growth of trade. Colonialism thus simultaneously engendered and retarded the development of capitalism in the colonies; capitalism developed in the most painful and horrible fashion. This contradiction was further exacerbated by the increased export of capital which is a feature of imperialism, capitalism's final, monopoly stage.

This could not but have an explosive outcome. Capitalist development led to the emergence and strengthening of national aspirations which could only be fulfilled by breaking the chains of colonial bondage. This process also engendered the formation of the proletariat, the gravedigger of capitalism, in vast parts of the world.

As a consequence, the twentieth century has seen the outpouring of a stream of anti-colonial struggle. At the close of World War II, this stream developed into a torrent. The following years witnessed the collapse of the old British, French, Dutch and other colonial empires, as nations with an aggregate population exceeding one billion won varying degrees of political independence.

Neo-Colonialism: Colonial Plunder in a New Form

With the collapse of the old colonial empires, the imperialist powers turned to neo-colonialism, or new-style colonialism, a policy of subjugating weaker nations which are formally independent. Neo-colonialism continues that super-exploitation of the toiling masses in the oppressed countries that was a hallmark of colonialism. Today, through neo-colonial means, imperialist plunder continues on a vast international scale.

Neo-colonialism rests upon an alliance of imperialism with the local exploiters who have come to power. Compared with colonialism, it entails a bigger role for the national bourgeoisie in exploiting the local workers and peasants. The national bourgeoisie, as it gains wider latitude to pursue its own capitalist development, increasingly fears the aspirations of the toilers of its own nationality and looks to imperialism for help in suppressing them. The local bourgeoisie may continue to squabble with imperialism over the division of the spoils of the exploitation of the toilers, it may continue to spout nationalist rhetoric to throw dust in the eyes of the masses, but it snuggles closer and closer to imperialism. Thus, neo-colonialism is marked by a stepped- up alliance between the imperialist overlords and the local exploiters, who serve as the social basis for the continued imperialist domination of the country.

Hence, generally speaking, the replacement of colonialism by neo-colonialism signifies a higher level of capitalist development in the newly independent countries than before and a more developed class struggle between the national bourgeoisie on the one hand and the workers and peasants on the other. At the same time, the absolute level of economic development may remain very low and the national bourgeoisie absorbs the most backward feudal remnants and dregs rather than overthrowing them.

In the era of neo-colonialism, there is a broad range of different types of regimes in the oppressed countries. Some countries still remain outright colonies (Puerto Rico, Namibia, Northern Ireland, etc.), and other peoples are subjected to the rule of garrison states (e.g., Palestine, South Africa). Some formally independent countries are ruled by outright puppet regimes, which would hardly survive a day without the direct military and economic support of this or that imperialist power. Then there are also different kinds of bourgeois nationalist governments which are tied to varying degrees with foreign imperialism. They range from avowedly pro-imperialist governments to others which take a reformist attitude towards the imperialists. Some of the reformist regimes have come to power as the result of armed struggle, but their establishment shows that the liberation struggle was stopped halfway. The more thorough victory of the revolution gives rise to either revolutionary democratic or socialist regimes. The revolutionary democratic regimes have a great liberating significance. But even here, unless the proletariat, in alliance with the other toiling masses, establishes its hegemony and embarks on the road to socialism, these governments too will sooner or later fall into dependence on imperialism and become ordinary bourgeois nationalist regimes. Only the socialist revolution can do away with imperialist domination altogether.

Under neo-colonialism, the imperialists have continued their exploitation of the world on an unprecedented scale. They are developing new methods, and refining old methods, one after another, of economic and political domination to replace the former method of direct colonial rule. The international debt crisis is a flagrant example of the tremendous scale of neo-colonial plunder. Through powerful instruments such as foreign "aid," the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the U.S. billionaires and their fellow imperialists hold much of the world in a financial hammerlock. During the past decade alone, the increase of the indebtedness of the dependent countries to imperialism has exceeded that of all previous history. The burden of this debt is borne by the masses of toilers in the dependent countries, who continue to stagger under a heavy yoke of double exploitation and who see the cutbacks in their living standards coldly dictated by the ruthless bankers in the IMF and other international financial circles.

Today, in the midst of the current crisis, the imperialists are turning the screws on the dependent countries to an unprecedented extent. This is inspiring a new upsurge in the revolutionary movements in the oppressed countries.

The Revolution in the Oppressed Countries

The concrete situation facing the working masses in the oppressed countries varies widely. The character and specific features of the struggle against imperialist domination vary accordingly. In some countries, it is the socialist revolution which is the only way to fight imperialist domination. In others, the revolution is at a democratic stage which will later pass over to a second, socialist stage. Elsewhere, there is a straightforward national liberation struggle, but even here the strength of the movement depends directly on how far it is intertwined with the revolutionary movement for the improvement of the conditions of the toilers, for example, with the agrarian revolution.

Among these countries there are differences in the internal class relations and in the degree of capitalist development. In some countries there remain substantial feudal survivals. The revolution in such countries therefore has weighty democratic tasks, such as overthrowing the autocracy, or seizing the feudal landholdings and giving land to the peasants. There are also different levels of capitalist development. In some countries, the large-scale importation of capital in recent decades has promoted rapid, lopsided capitalist development. This lopsided development often only accentuates a country's dependency. But, invariably, it means an increase in the size of the proletariat and of the importance of the struggle between labor and capital, the class struggle, in the revolution.

The democratic and socialist tasks of the revolution thus intertwine in a myriad of ways. No single formula describes the general stage nor the specific features of all these struggles, which follow from the concrete historical conditions in each country.

In the colonies and the dependent countries, even when the revolution is still at the democratic stage, the leading role of the proletariat is of decisive importance for the outcome of the struggle. The proletariat is the only class that has no interest in exploitation of any kind. It is the most consistent revolutionary class, the most consistent fighter against both imperialism and the domestic exploiters. Thus, even in a democratic revolution, the proletariat must organize itself as an independent class force. It must both champion the general movement and defend its own class interests against the exploiters. It must be imbued with socialist consciousness, and it must build its own independent organization. It will then be capable of rallying the other toilers to its side and of fighting for the most decisive outcome of the democratic revolution and for its continuation into a socialist revolution.

The proletariat is vitally interested in the national liberation movement and democratic revolution. It takes part in these struggles in order to enhance the fighting will of the masses, to strike a blow at world imperialism, and to clear away all the obstacles to the development of the class struggle and the socialist revolution. The more thorough the democratic revolution, the faster and more intense will be the development of the class struggle. Thus the proletariat fights for the most decisive outcome of the national liberation struggle and the democratic revolution. Such an outcome is not a bourgeois nationalist government or a liberal bourgeois order, but a revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. But, whatever the outcome of the struggle, the proletariat must use the new conditions that are created in order to continue the struggle uninterruptedly. The extent of the independent organization of the working class and the mobilization of the toilers around the proletariat achieved during the democratic revolution is itself an important factor for enabling the workers and peasants to develop the class struggle and carry the revolution forward to the socialist stage.

To the extent that the class struggle is overshadowed by the weight of tyranny or national oppression pressing down on the whole society, especially in countries with a low level of economic development, the national bourgeoisie, or sections of it, may take on national revolutionary features. In such a situation, the proletariat may be able to utilize a temporary alliance with the revolutionary wing of the bourgeoisie. But, at all times, the proletariat must maintain its independence.

The national bourgeoisie takes part in a national liberation struggle from the standpoint of its own class interests. The bourgeoisie's interest in the struggle against national oppression stems from its striving for its own national market and for its own exclusive right to exploit "its own'' workers and peasants. Even while the bourgeoisie is thus attracted to the national movement, it recoils from it in fear that the movement might become a profound revolutionary struggle that goes on to abolish exploitation altogether. Therefore, the bourgeois section of the national movement tends towards national reformism, that is, towards seeking accommodation with the imperialists at the expense of the toiling masses. The further the revolution develops, the greater the danger that the bourgeoisie will abandon it altogether. Therefore, the proletariat must at all times safeguard its independence, and it must combat the vacillations and betrayals which the bourgeoisie engenders in the national liberation movement.

The Liberation Movement of the Oppressed Peoples and the Revolution in the Imperialist Heartlands

The division of nations into oppressor and oppressed is an essential feature of imperialism. From this it follows that the workers of an oppressor nation must demand the right of self-determination for the oppressed countries, especially for those that are oppressed by "their own'' bourgeoisie. They must support the liberation struggle of the oppressed peoples against the imperialist yoke.

This stand is not based simply on moral obligation, but on the most vital class interests of the proletariat. Through the national oppression of other peoples, the imperialist bourgeoisie forges heavy chains to bind its own workers to capitalist slavery. The imperialist bourgeoisie stirs up chauvinism and racism against the subject peoples, and this chauvinism is one of the most potent tools of reaction. It builds up its military and police forces and trains a bloodthirsty military clique. It uses the super-profits from the exploitation of the oppressed peoples to prop up reaction and to bribe off a section of the working masses. Thus, fighting the crimes of "its own'' bourgeoisie against other peoples, crimes which foster and strengthen capitalist reaction at home, is essential to the struggle of the working class for its own emancipation.

Any number of contemporary examples point to the close connection between the liberation movement of the oppressed peoples and the revolutionary struggles in the oppressor countries. One such example is that of the struggle in Portugal and the national liberation wars of the Portuguese colonies in Africa. The crisis created in Portugal by the burden of its colonial wars spurred on the revolution of April 1974 which overthrew the hated tyranny of the fascist dictator Caetano (the successor of the fascist Salazar). This, in turn, hastened the victory of the national liberation struggle in the colonies.

Similarly, the struggle in the U.S. against the imperialist aggression in Viet Nam was an important current in the mass storms of the 1960's. It contributed to the development of the revolutionary movement here, while also helping to undermine the imperialist war effort and thus help defeat U.S. imperialism.

These examples highlight the importance of support for the liberation movement of the oppressed peoples and opposition to imperialist aggression as a front of the class struggle. This is a front which plays a big role in the development of the revolutionary movement and of burning hatred against the imperialist bourgeoisie. It is a front which is connected to some of the deepest crises confronting imperialism.

Thus our Party gives special weight to systematically exposing and opposing the crimes of U.S. imperialism against the oppressed peoples. We support wholeheartedly the liberation struggles directed against "our own'' American billionaires. We strive to mobilize a powerful movement among the working masses in solidarity with the struggle against U.S. imperialism.

In supporting the struggle against world imperialism, we give special attention to supporting the development, in the oppressed countries, of the Marxist-Leninist parties of the working class and the revolutionary movement of the toilers. This is our proletarian internationalist duty to our brother workers and peasants in these countries. This is the greatest contribution we can make to strengthening the conscious forces of the revolution in these countries.

Nevertheless, we judge each struggle from the overall perspective of the struggle against world imperialism. We support all those struggles that actually hit against and undermine world imperialism, irrespective of whether we agree with this or that aspect of their program or with whatever group is in the leadership. We work enthusiastically for the proletariat to become the leader of the liberation struggle, and we express our views, as appropriate, on the burning issues of the struggle, but, provided that the struggle is not directed against the local toiling masses, we do not make proletarian leadership a prerequisite for our support.

The revolutionary movements in the dependent countries are an important part of the contemporary world revolution. Living in the very heartland of the vast U.S. neo-colonial empire, we have a special responsibility to champion the interests of the oppressed peoples against U.S. imperialist plunder and domination. The Marxist-Leninist Party links the cause of the socialist revolution with the struggle of the working masses all around the world and fights with determination and enthusiasm against U.S. imperialism.

K. On the Upsurge in the International Movement Against Imperialist War

The period since the Founding Congress of our Party in 1980 has witnessed the resurgence on an international scale of a mass movement against the war preparations of the imperialist powers. In the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia and particularity in Western Europe, imperialist metropolises have been swept by a whirlwind of protest against the escalating arms race. Mass demonstrations have swelled to ten times and more their previous size, as thousands upon thousands of workers and other progressive people have stirred to action.

The MLP warmly welcomes this important development. We take particular joy that the mass demonstrations and other actions are hitting blows against the diabolical war schemes of U.S. imperialism, our own chief enemy. The growth of this movement to massive proportions shows the tremendous latent force of the working class and progressive masses in the fight against the war preparations of the imperialist and social-imperialist warmakers. This struggle will become an important component of the fight against imperialism.

The resurgence of this movement on an international scale has been sparked by the numerous aggressions and the accelerated war preparations which all the imperialist and social-imperialist powers are carrying out.

In the U.S., the Reaganites have made unprecedented increases in military spending. The imperialists are planning and deploying monstrous new weapons of mass destruction. Cruise and Pershing II missiles are rolling off the assembly line; the neutron bomb and the MX system are being developed; and a new arms race is intensifying in outer space. U.S. imperialism, with its worldwide war machine, is carrying out military intervention in diverse corners of the globe. And the scenes of the imperialists' crimes of intervention have become the testing grounds for the latest in their arsenal of "conventional" warfare. All this has been accompanied by a war chorus of rabid chauvinism and saber rattling.

U.S. imperialism's NATO allies too are jacking up their military budgets and engaging in military adventures of their own, while collaborating with the U.S. in further swelling the nuclear arsenal deployed in Europe. In Asia, U.S. imperialism is assisting the rearmament program of the Japanese militarists, while also outfitting its new-found ally, Chinese social-imperialism.

Meanwhile, the social-imperialist Soviet Union is also feverishly arming. The recent deployment, in the name of the Warsaw Pact, of the Soviet SS-20 nuclear missiles and a new generation of Soviet tanks are but part of this monstrous arming and rearming.

While arming to the teeth, the imperialists and social - imperialists cry that their real intent is peace. This hypocrisy is starkly shown up by the very real aggression in which they are already engaged. U.S. imperialism's criminal intervention in Central America and Lebanon and the savage Soviet social-imperialist invasion of Afghanistan offer eloquent testimony to the sham of the big powers' cries about peace and to the reality of their warmaking.

These acts of aggression and the danger of new wars, including nuclear holocaust, are deeply rooted in the imperialist system itself. The huge dimensions of monopoly capitalism and the insatiable drive for profits inherent in it spawn the strivings of the big powers to subjugate other nations, to carve out international spheres of influence, and to clash with one another over their domains. The reactionary war over the Falkland Islands (Malvinas), in which the nationalist adventure of the Argentine fascists to divert the Argentine workers from revolution collided with the colonial interests of British imperialism, is a vivid example of how imperialist politics brutally and abruptly erupt into war.

There can thus be no expectation that the imperialists will mend their ways; neither the Reaganites nor their "liberal" imperialist counterparts; neither the superpowers nor their cohorts in Western Europe and elsewhere. All are driven toward war by the most fundamental features of capitalist imperialism. Only the working class can stand, consistently and uncompromisingly, against imperialist war. Only the working class and other toilers allied with it can rise up in their millions in a powerful torrent of struggle against imperialist war.

The working masses must wage this struggle independently of and against their "own" bourgeoisie, which inevitably allies with one or another aggressive bloc while pursuing its own imperialist ends. In each imperialist metropolis, a cornerstone of the anti-war movement must be hostility toward one's "own" bourgeoisie, must be to target its imperialist aims, its rearmament, its pirouettes in the dance of the big powers. In Western Europe, the fight against U.S. imperialism's stationing of the cruise and Pershing II missiles must be linked to opposing the West European imperialists as well. In the U.S., the movement must firmly oppose all the war preparations of the imperialists, expose their warmongering and rabid chauvinism, and cut through the smokescreen of phrases about "national defense" and "peace initiatives" of Reagan and the Democrats alike.

Only such a stand can build an independent movement of the working masses. Such a movement can put up a powerful and consistent fight against the warmakers. And it can play an important role in preparing the way for the socialist revolution, which, by abolishing imperialism, can free mankind of the horrors of war and bring about a just and lasting peace.

This requires a bitter fight against social-democracy, revisionism and opportunism, which champion the interests of their own bourgeoisie in the movement in each country. The hypocrisy of the social-democrats knows no bounds. In the U.S., the heroes of the "left" wing of the Democratic Party, who pose as opponents of Reagan's war buildup, vote for one record military budget after another. In West Germany, the out-of-power Social Democratic Party is today wooing the movement and posing as an apostle of peace, when just yesterday it was in power and collaborating fully in Reagan's plans to swell the nuclear arsenal deployed there. In Britain, the officially "anti-nuke" Laborites tried to outdo the Tory government in warmongering over the Falkland Islands. After all, this was "conventional" warfare. In France the social-democratic government, embroiled in military adventure in Africa, is supporting Reagan's plan to deploy the cruise and Pershing II missiles, while stepping up its own stockpiling of nuclear arms.

Themselves-accomplices in the war preparations of the imperialists, the social-democrats and their allies seek to deflect the masses from a stern class war against imperialism. They downplay the initiative of the masses and promote negotiations among the warmakers as the way to peace. They seek to draw the movement away from targeting the actual war measures of their own imperialists, try to whitewash their own bourgeoisie, and to limit and even disorganize the struggle.

The social-democrats have hatched up deceptive slogans to serve these ends. In the U.S. they have raised the slogan of a "nuclear freeze," which neither addresses U.S. imperialism's culpability for the arms race, nor comes out against its monstrous war machine. In Western Europe, a prominent example of this is the slogan of a neutral zone in Europe. According to this slogan, the bourgeoisie of important imperialist powers such as West Germany and France, with their own blood-soaked history and their own imperialist ambitions, are to be cured of their piratical ways without the inconvenience of the socialist revolution curing the world of them. Yea, they will lie down like lambs and remain aloof from the mad rivalry among their profit-crazed imperialist fellows. In fact, history shows that the West European imperialists, of their own accord, are fully capable of plunging the world into a bloodbath. The slogan of a neutral zone in Europe serves only to promote pacifist illusions and whitewash the West European imperialists' own aggressive ambitions. The fight to free the movement of the influence of the social-democrats and their allies requires systematic exposure of such slogans.

The MLP fights against militarism, wars of aggression, and the preparations for a third world war. We hold that this struggle must be aimed against the exploiters and imperialists who are the source of war. Wars arise because the exploiters enforce their oppression through fire and sword. As long as exploitation and oppression exist, the exploiters will continue to set millions of people to kill each other to determine which handful of wealthy parasites will get the bigger part of the spoils, and they will continue to throw themselves upon revolutionary peoples in order to crush them and bring them back into the orbit of world reaction. An end can be put to all war only when the source of war is destroyed, only with the overthrow of exploiters and the victory of the socialist revolution on the world scale.

Therefore, we distinguish between different types of war. There are reactionary wars, wars that put millions of working people to death for the profits of a handful of millionaires, wars of plunder and aggression. But there are also liberating wars, wars that free the masses. These include national liberation wars, such as the wars of the colonial subjects against the colonial overlords. These also include revolutions, which are a form of civil war, such as the uprisings of the slaves against the slaveholders, and the insurrections of the workers and all the exploited against the capitalists. Such liberating wars, despite all the horrors and suffering that inevitably accompany all wars, are fully necessary, legitimate and progressive. These wars bring closer the day of liberation on a world scale and thus bring closer the great day when there will be no more war at all. Meanwhile these wars weaken the imperialists and thus put a spoke in their plans for a third world war.

Thus our Party, just as it firmly denounces and condemns U.S. imperialism's criminal interventions in El Salvador, firmly supports the revolutionary war waged by the Salvadoran people for liberation from the jackboot of U.S. imperialism and the local oligarchy. In other cases, as in the recent war over the Falkland Islands (Malvinas), our Party has unhesitatingly condemned both sides as reactionary. Above all, we work for the socialist revolution right here in the heartland of U.S. imperialism as the only way to end U.S. imperialism's criminal military aggression around the globe once and for all.

Pacifism denounces all war without distinction and tries to fight war while leaving its source intact. Consequently it is no surprise that, despite the personal sincerity of various pacifists, pacifism has always proved impotent. Moreover, pacifist phrases have proved of use to the warmongers themselves and their apologists. Most imperialist warmongers today, from Reagan to Andropov, know enough to cloak all their evil deeds, from the arms race to brutal invasions, in the language of peace, arms control, peacekeeping, and so forth. Only a struggle that targets the actual warmongers, and that connects the anti-war cause with the struggle against exploitation and oppression, can truly fight imperialist war.

The anti-war movement that has blossomed on a world scale is directed against reactionary war and the preparations for a new world holocaust. The MLP warmly welcomes the resurgence of this international movement against the war preparations of the imperialists. We hail the blows it is landing against the war schemes of the U.S. imperialists. We support the international movement by working for an upsurge right here in the heartland of U.S. imperialism in the struggle against the imperialist war preparations. If directed squarely at the imperialist system, this movement will draw millions into the fight against the warmakers and make an important contribution to the socialist revolution.

[Photo: A demonstration against nuclear missiles in West Berlin.]

L. Soviet Social-imperialism -- Enemy of the Revolution and Socialism

Once the land where the working class was successfully building socialism, today the revisionist Soviet Union stands, along with the United States, as an imperialist superpower, one of the two greatest enemies of socialism and the revolution.

The Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 was an earthshaking historical advance. For the workers and oppressed the world over it blazed the path of liberation from the yoke of capitalist slavery. The Bolshevik revolution confirmed in real life the Marxist-Leninist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism. For four decades the Soviet toilers performed miracles in building the new socialist society and in defending it in the war against fascism. The class conscious workers and liberation fighters of all lands harbored a profound respect for the Soviet revolution and readily fought to defend its accomplishments as their own.

But these accomplishments have long been trampled into the mud by the Khrushchovs, Brezhnevs and Andropovs. In the mid-1950's Khrushchov and his crew of revisionist traitors seized the helm of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. These revisionists represented the bureaucratized strata which had emerged as a new bourgeoisie within Soviet society. The revisionists destroyed the dictatorship of the proletariat and rigged up a new capitalist dictatorship of the revisionist overlords. Once in power the revisionists step by step destroyed all the socialist gains of the Soviet working class which had been won and defended through so much heroic sacrifice.

Thus, "socialism" in the Soviet Union has been reduced to a rusty signboard. Capitalist relations of exploitation and tyranny prevail from top to bottom. The Soviet worker is exploited to the bone by the state monopoly capitalist bourgeois who, with his fat salary and bonuses and bribes, and with his limousines and dachas, lives like the capitalist lords everywhere. The bureaucratic state machine rules over the working people with an iron hand. At the same time all the capitalist sores have reappeared. Economic crisis, inflation and unemployment, racism and brutal national oppression, alcoholism and all-sided social decay -- these are the realities of restored capitalism in the Soviet Union.

On the foundation of this revisionist-style capitalism has emerged social-imperialism, that is to say, socialism in words and imperialism in deeds. The Soviet Union has been transformed into an imperialist superpower, a world exploiter, aggressor and warmaker.

When the Soviet Union was socialist, it made great sacrifices in solidarity with the workers and peasants of other lands. But today the Soviet social-imperialist metropolis sucks the blood of the working people of the revisionist countries of Eastern Europe, Cuba and the other COMECON countries. Among the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America it links up with the exploiting regimes, grants enslaving credits to finance sales of military hardware and other Soviet exports, and unfolds a whole system of typically neo-colonialist relations. Meanwhile, for the sake of their imperialist sphere of domination, the Soviet new tsars haven't hesitated to unleash aggression. The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, the intervention against the Eritrean people, and the ongoing war to subjugate Afghanistan -- these reveal the bared fangs of Soviet social-imperialism.

The imperialist rulers of the Soviet Union and the United States are engaged in a sharp rivalry over the conquest of markets and spheres of exploitation and plunder. Just like their American counterparts, the Soviet militarists are arming to the teeth for a trial of strength to see which imperialist slave owner will seize more slaves and riches. They too are building up their nuclear arsenals sky-high for such a war and to engage in nuclear blackmail against the world's people.

Andropov and company pose as the champions of the peoples of Central America and the Middle East and the other victims of U.S. imperialist aggression. Likewise, Reagan and company pose as the saviors of the Polish and Afghan peoples and other targets of Soviet social-imperialist aggression. But in reality both superpowers stand for imperialist slavery and war. When they quarrel as well as when they collaborate, both agree that the fate of all mankind should be settled in the private wheelings and dealings between the two nuclear superpowers. Separately and together they both are the deadly enemies of the socialist revolution and the liberation struggles.

In the U.S., the revolutionary movement must always devote its main attention to the fight against "our own" U.S. imperialist ruling class. At the same time, one cannot wage a serious struggle against monopoly capitalism and imperialism in this country while whitewashing this very same system of monopoly capitalism and imperialism in the Soviet Union. For the fight against the U.S. bourgeoisie to be waged consistently and on a solid foundation demands a firm stand against all imperialism and reaction, including Soviet social-imperialism. Moreover, this is the only stand which can assist the Soviet working class to once again mount the barricades of the proletarian revolution and overthrow the bourgeois-revisionist yoke, to again raise aloft the Marxist-Leninist banner of the socialist revolution.

M. Revisionist China and the Counter-Revolutionary U.S.-China Alliance

Revisionist China and the warmongering U.S.-China alliance stand as dangerous counter-revolutionary forces in the world today.

In 1949 the Chinese anti-imperialist democratic revolution won victory. China broke free of imperialist slavery, striking a heavy blow to U.S. imperialism and the other imperialist sharks that fed on the flesh of the Chinese people. The vast millions of toilers were liberated from centuries-old tyranny as the revolution brought a series of important reforms. The peasants got land. The ancient scourge of famine was wiped out. Literacy was brought to the masses. And the initial steps of widescale industrial development were taken. The Chinese people had stood up, inspiring the oppressed everywhere. The Chinese working class and people won victory because they built a communist party and took the road of revolution.

But the fruits of the revolution were to be tragically betrayed by revisionism. Mao Zedong played a major role in leading the Chinese people's epoch-making liberation struggle. However, history has shown that Mao Zedong didn't have the world outlook of a proletarian revolutionary, but that of a revolutionary bourgeois democrat. And it has shown that Mao's failure to adhere to Marxist-Leninist principle, which became especially pronounced after liberation, led to the eventual betrayal of the revolution.

Mao Zedong and the other leaders of the Chinese Communist Party tried to steer China down a third road between capitalism and socialism. As a result, development proceeded unevenly, the bourgeoisie was never routed out, and the socialist system was never consolidated. Eventually Chinese society slipped back deep into the quagmire of capitalism.

The beginning of the collapse of the efforts of the Chinese leaders to steer a third road first became apparent in the international arena. In the early 1970's, while U.S. bombs rained down on Viet Nam, Mao Zedong initiated the rapprochement with U.S. imperialism. By the end of the decade the rapprochement had evolved into the undeclared U.S.-China military alliance -- a dangerous hotbed of counter-revolution and imperialist aggression. Once a force standing against imperialism, China joined the imperialist camp. It joined the dance of the imperialist and social- imperialist big powers for carving up the world among themselves. Once a supporter of the revolutionary struggles of the world's people, China became a social-imperialist bulwark of reaction. It backs up all of the bloodstained enemies of the working class and the oppressed.

The ideological foundation of these counter-revolutionary stands in foreign policy is the "three worlds'' theory upheld by Mao Zedong. This revisionist theory denies the class struggle, the revolution and socialism. It paints up such "third world" hangman regimes as that of Pinochet in Chile and Marcos in the Philippines as the "motive force of history." And it justifies supporting one superpower bloc in its imperialist rivalry with the other.

In internal policy, the collapse of the attempts to steer a third road became apparent after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Soon afterwards Deng Xiao-ping and the other ultra-right revisionists gained commanding positions in the Chinese leadership. Since that time capitalist relations of exploitation have been consolidated from top to bottom. Economic management has been placed on the typical lines of capitalist profit-making. Private capital has been given a free hand. And the door has been opened once again for imperialist capital to suck the blood of the Chinese people.

The Chinese revisionists have brought disaster upon the Chinese people. It is inevitable that sooner or later the militant Chinese proletariat will come to understand that the anti-Marxist ideas of Chinese revisionism and Maoism have led up a dead end. The working class must lead the Chinese people in overthrowing the revisionist-capitalist yoke and taking the Marxist-Leninist road of the socialist revolution.

[Photo: Soviet and Chinese social-imperialism are denounced in a May Day parade organized in 1979 by the COUSML, predecessor of the MLP.]

N. Solidarity With Socialist Albania, the Only Genuinely Socialist Country in the World Today

In the world today the People's Socialist Republic of Albania stands as the only genuinely socialist country.

Blockaded and despised by U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, socialist Albania stands firm against the imperialist superpowers. Surrounded by a capitalist and revisionist world wracked by economic crisis, Albania is crisis-free and carries forward its planned economic construction. While scores of other countries are drowning in debts to the imperialist sharks, Albania is building socialism through its own efforts without owing a dollar or a ruble to anyone.

The Albanian working class and people have transformed the old Albania of the capitalist and landlord regime, the poorest and most backward country of Europe prior to the revolution in 1944, into an advanced socialist society. It is a society without exploiters and exploited, without rich and poor, where the working people are building for themselves a better life.

The new socialist society in Albania was born in the flames of revolution. The Albanian people liberated themselves from the Nazi-fascist yoke through their heroic national liberation war. They fought and won victory over both the invaders and the internal class enemies. Upon liberation they took the path of the socialist revolution. They built up the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They step by step confiscated the property of the capitalists and landlords and consolidated socialism. These socialist gains in Albania were safeguarded in heroic struggles against the revisionist betrayal. The Party of Labor of Albania led the working class and people in courageous battles against the Yugoslav, Soviet and Chinese revisionists.

Since the days of the October Revolution, the existence of the socialist system has been the greatest achievement of the international working class movement. With the revisionist betrayal in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, today Albania is the sole country where the working class holds the reins of power, and the new socialist society is successfully being built. By its very force of example the existence of socialism carries a potential threat to bourgeois rule everywhere. That is why the capitalists and revisionists will never cease to curse it and to make efforts to wipe it out. The MLP,USA stands with the class conscious proletarians and their revolutionary vanguards on all continents in pledging its militant defense of socialism in Albania.

[Photo: A partisan detachment during the national liberation war in Albania.]

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V. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST REVISIONISM AND SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY

A. Against Soviet Revisionism

The Second Congress holds that the ideological and political struggle against Soviet revisionism is a vital front of the class struggle.

World capitalism fights the revolutionary working class movement by frontal attack; it wages war against it, and shoots down and throws in prison the revolutionary workers and Marxist-Leninists. At the same time it also fights the revolutionary working class movement and socialism by making use of opportunism. That is why it was overjoyed by the emergence of modern revisionism in the Soviet Union.

Modern revisionism distorts and vulgarizes the Marxist- Leninist theory, transforming it from a revolutionary, dynamic and mobilizing force, into something dead, ugly and useless. It robs Marxism-Leninism of its revolutionary essence, turning it into a lifeless dogma to reconcile the working masses to exploitation and tyranny. The modem revisionists speak in the name of Leninism, but in fact they have resuscitated the reformist and social-democratic theories that revolutionary Leninism was born in the struggle against.

Today modern revisionism is divided up into a number of currents, including Soviet revisionism, Chinese revisionism, Yugoslav revisionism and "Eurocommunist" revisionism. Among these, Soviet revisionism remains the strongest ideological and political current working against the world revolution. It has the backing of the Soviet social- imperialist state behind it, as well as the other revisionist- capitalist states in its orbit. It has adherents in revisionist parties and organizations around the world, including the Communist Party, USA and a number of smaller opportunist groupings here in the U.S. The supporters of Soviet revisionism are not a monolithic bloc. Rather there is a good deal of strife and division among them, as each of the revisionist parties divides its loyalties between the revisionist center in Moscow and its own bourgeoisie. Nevertheless they make up a single trend united against the revolution.

Soviet revisionism emerged as a complete ideological system under the arch-traitor Nikita Khrushchov in the mid-1950's. Since that time it has been further elaborated and refined under Khrushchov's heirs, Brezhnev and Andropov, but its basic foundations have remained unchanged. It dresses itself up as the "creative development" of the Marxist-Leninist theory; but in reality, in the guise of "creative development," Soviet revisionism has trampled into the mud all the revolutionary principles set forth in the classic writings of Marxism-Leninism.

Soviet revisionism is a program for overthrowing socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat where it exists, for capitalist restoration and the consolidation of revisionist state monopoly capitalism. Khrushchovism liquidated the proletarian class character of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. From the revolutionary vanguard of the working class, the Bolshevik Party was transformed into a special type of bourgeois party in the hands of the new bourgeois class of bureaucratized Soviet functionaries. The Soviet revisionists sought ideological justification for this by renouncing the Marxist-Leninist principles of the proletarian class party under the signboard that the old theories had become "obsolete" as the CPSU had allegedly evolved into a non-class "party of the whole people.

Khrushchovism liquidated the proletarian dictatorship and overthrew the proletarian class character of the state power. The Soviet state was transformed into a special type of monopoly capitalist regime in the hands of the new revisionist bourgeoisie for suppressing the working masses. Here too the Soviet revisionists threw overboard the fundamental Marxist-Leninist principles. They dusted off the old social-democratic theory about the state being independent of class antagonisms, a theory that masks the bourgeois dictatorship, on the plea that the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat were no longer applicable to the Soviet Union, where the state had allegedly evolved into "the state of the whole people."

Khrushchov and his heirs have also done a great deal of theorizing about the construction of "developed socialism" in the Soviet Union; but this is just so much window dressing to legitimize exploitation, state monopoly capitalism and all the ills that come with it.

In the capitalist countries, Soviet revisionism repudiates the class struggle and the proletarian revolution. It stands for class collaboration and reformism. It theorizes about capitalism growing over into socialism, and sees the strengthening of state monopoly capitalism (governmental intervention in the economy, nationalizations, etc.) as evolutionary steps towards this goal. Soviet revisionism also theorizes on how the parliaments, courts and other instruments of the bourgeois dictatorship can bring justice and even socialism to the working people. Thus, the Soviet revisionists preach subservience to the capitalist power; they abhor the militant strikes, demonstrations and revolts of the working people; and they inevitably take the side of the bourgeoisie against the revolutionary movement.

Soviet revisionism strives to destroy the political independence of the proletariat. It does so by hitching the workers to the liberal capitalists, the social-democrats, the reformist trade union bureaucrats, and other forces of bourgeois influence on the masses. Merger with social-democracy is a particular hallmark of the Soviet revisionist platform. Like the social-democrats, the pro-Soviet revisionist parties are also saturated with petty-bourgeois nationalism, which subordinates the working masses to their "own" bourgeoisie and capitalist government.

In short, Soviet revisionism reduces the proletarian party to a typical bourgeois labor party, virtually indistinguishable from a social-democratic party. A most graphic example of this is presently being provided by the "Communist" Party of France, which is part of the Social-Democrats' governing coalition there, and takes an active part in saddling the working class with the brutal capitalist offensive being unleashed by the Mitterrand government.

Soviet revisionism is also a bitter enemy of the revolutionary movement of the oppressed peoples. It poses as the champion of the oppressed nations. But in reality it undermines the revolutionary struggles of the oppressed peoples and defends imperialism's neo-colonial slavery. It dresses up the exploiting regimes, from the more liberal regimes to various bloodstained reactionary regimes of the big capitalists and landlords, in glorious liberation colors, as the standard-bearers of the peoples' struggles against imperialism. The Soviet revisionist propaganda portrays, among others, the fascist Argentine generals as "liberating" heroes; and it trumpets the reactionary Ethiopian junta, which is waging genocidal war against the Eritrean people, as a model of "revolutionary anti-imperialism." Thus the very governments which act as the guardians of imperialist interests are proclaimed to be the bulwarks of freedom and social progress. Soviet revisionism even theorizes on how these capitalist regimes can put their countries on the road of "non-capitalist development" and "socialism," just so long as they base their development on shipments of Soviet equipment and enslaving Soviet credits.

The Soviet revisionists play the role of saboteurs and scabs against the revolutionary liberation struggles in the

Middle East, Central America and elsewhere. On the one hand, they seek to tap the liberation struggles against U.S. imperialism for their own political capital. At the same time they strive to keep the struggle within bounds, to ensure that the working masses do not break out of the framework of imperialist and social-imperialist tutelage. They work to strengthen the hand of the national reformist and compromising elements. And they are always wheeling and dealing behind the scenes with U.S. imperialism and the reactionary regimes to keep the revolutionary fires in check.

Soviet revisionism advertises that its greatest merit is its so-called "peace policy"; but in reality this is a policy of pacifist rhetoric to cover its own warmongering and to lull the masses.

Just like their U.S. counterparts, the Soviet leaders espouse typical imperialist pacifism to hide their own aggression and war buildup. Under the banner of their glorious "peace policy," Soviet tanks crushed Czechoslovakia, are now also threatening Poland, and 100,000 Soviet troops are waging war on Afghanistan. The Soviet revisionists spin fantastic theories about the wonders that disarmament will bring mankind some day in the future, while today, along with the United States, the Soviet Union is building up its arsenals to the skies in preparation for a world slaughter to defend its imperialist empire.

For the masses who are searching for a way to fight the war danger, Soviet revisionism dishes up bourgeois pacifism. Instead of a revolutionary Leninist struggle against the imperialist governments that are responsible for the threat of war, it portrays the imperialist warmakers as "reasonable" men who can be convinced to beat their swords into plowshares. Instead of calling for the strengthening of the class struggle and for revolutionary battles against these governments, Soviet revisionism preaches that the whole world should beg Reagan and Andropov and the other chieftains of imperialism and social-imperialism to negotiate peace among themselves.

According to the Soviet revisionist concepts of "peaceful coexistence," the highest aspiration of mankind is not emancipation but the "relaxation of tensions" and "international detente" with imperialism. In the name of this "relaxation," they demand the dampening of the struggles of the exploited and oppressed against their exploiters and oppressors. After all, they theorize, revolutionary upheaval poses the danger of disturbing the world balance between the two imperialist superpowers -- that is, the superpower balance of nuclear terror, plunder and aggression.

On all fronts, Soviet revisionism continues to play its counter-revolutionary role in the service of imperialism, capitalism and world reaction.

The revolutionary Marxist-Leninist forces began the open struggle for the exposure of Soviet revisionism over twenty years ago. Since that time it has been proven a million times over that this struggle was and remains essential for defending the interests of the working class, the revolution and Marxism-Leninism.

This struggle has scored a series of important victories as represented by the defense of socialism in Albania, the creation of the new Marxist-Leninist parties and by the hostility harbored by sections of the class conscious workers and revolutionary elements all over the world towards the Soviet revisionist treachery. At the same time

this struggle against Soviet revisionism has had its high points and low points, its strengths and weaknesses. In particular, the open betrayal of Chinese revisionism over the last several years has caused considerable damage. In the past, the leadership of the Communist Party of China had stood as an opponent of Soviet revisionism. But now China too has completely collapsed into the revisionist quagmire, has entered into a disgusting alliance with U.S. imperialism and the reactionary forces worldwide, and has abandoned any pretense of being opposed to modern revisionism in any form. This has been a boon to the pro-Soviet revisionist forces around the globe. This has allowed the Soviet revisionists certain opportunities to pass off their counterfeit "Marxist-Leninist" and "anti-U.S. imperialist" credentials. This underscores that there can be no slackening of the struggle against and the exposure of Soviet revisionism.

The Chinese revisionist betrayal also brought to the surface weaknesses in the historic struggle against the Soviet revisionist betrayal. It showed that this struggle must be based firmly on the principles of the classic writings of Marxism-Leninism, that it must be given deep ideological and political content, and that it must be waged tirelessly and carried through to the end. Only on this road can the proletariat and oppressed masses be liberated from the corrupting influence of the Soviet revisionist poison and defend their revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie and imperialism.

[Graphic.]

B. Against Chinese Revisionism

The Second Congress holds that the repudiation of Chinese revisionism and Maoism must be carried through to the end.

The international trend of Chinese revisionism is in deep crisis. China's prestige in the eyes of the revolutionary masses has never been so low, as China has shed its revolutionary pretensions and shamelessly wallows in capitalism and a counter-revolutionary alliance with U.S. imperialism and world reaction. The Maoist organizations in most countries, both those which support the present ultra-revisionist Chinese leaders and those who oppose them, are in disarray and a number have liquidated themselves outright in favor of social-democratic and Soviet revisionist trends. Nevertheless, the ideological concepts that led to the present catastrophe of Chinese revisionism have not evaporated into thin air; Maoism continues to undermine the world revolutionary movement.

The collapse of China into alliance with imperialism has its ideological basis in the anti-Leninist concepts systematized in the "three worlds" theory. The leaders of the Communist Party of China had advocated a number of "three worldist ideas for years previously, but it wasn't until the early 1970's that they put them together in a systematized theory. This was the period when the Chinese leadership was abandoning those revolutionary positions which it had held in the past, and was opening the gates for the alliance with U.S. imperialism. The theory of "three worlds" was cooked up to justify this renegacy. This theory was first fully spelled out in public in Deng Xiaoping's 1974 speech to the United Nations. The CPC's late chairman Mao Zedong upheld this theory, which is rooted in the anti-Leninist theses of Mao Zedong Thought.

The "three worlds" theory wipes out the class struggle and the revolution in the dependent countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. According to this theory the so-called "third world" is the "motive force of history." To pass off this idea, the Chinese leaders played on the enormous prestige of the national liberation movements, and they advocated grossly mistaken ideas about the role of various bourgeois nationalist regimes. Then, by sleight of hand, they combined the national liberation movements and all the various regimes of Asia, Africa and Latin America into a single bloc, which they labelled "the third world."

The end result of this "three worlds" juggling act is that the revolutionary liberation struggles drop out of the picture; no distinction is made among the various types of regimes, reactionary, liberal or revolutionary; and a blind eye is turned to the actual role of exploitation and oppression of the masses which is played by all but the revolutionary regimes. This is how the "three worlds" theory comes to portray the bloodstained lackeys of imperialism, such as Pinochet of Chile, Marcos of the Philippines, or the Pakistani military dictators as heroic liberation fighters against the two superpowers.

The "three worlds" theory separates the struggle against the foreign imperialist yoke from the internal class struggle against the domestic exploiters and reactionaries who rule in alliance with imperialism. Thus, this theory writes off the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat at the head of all the oppressed masses against the ruling regimes. It sacrifices the exploited and oppressed masses to the tender mercies of the local capitalist and landlord slave drivers and their imperialist masters.

The "three worlds" theory also wipes out the class struggle and the revolution in the imperialist heartlands. It whitewashes the aggressive and warmongering nature of the so-called "second world" imperialist countries of Western Europe, Canada and Japan. It portrays them simply as innocent victims of the two superpowers and denies that they too are imperialist wolves in their own right. When one of these powers further extends its imperialist tentacles into Asia, Africa or Latin America, the "three worlds" theory regards this as a step towards "second and third world unity against superpower hegemony."

In these countries, the "three worlds" theory separates the struggle against U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism from the class struggle for the overthrow of one's "own" capitalist ruling class. Thus, it replaces the proletarian socialist revolution with a nationalist struggle for independence from the superpowers. It puts forward a program of struggle for national independence as the path to universal peace, progress and prosperity. It does so as if the German, French, British, Italian, Japanese and other imperialists are not also exploiting and aggressive powers -- powers that have quite "independently" plunged the world into catastrophe in the past. The theory of "three worlds" justifies petty-bourgeois nationalism and unbridled social- chauvinism. It ties the proletariat to the national interests of its "own" imperialist bourgeoisie.

In fact, the "three worlds" theory gives the proletariat no independent role to play on a world scale. It is the extreme expression of Mao Zedong's skepticism towards the revolutionary capacity of the proletariat.

But without basing oneself on the proletariat and on the world revolutionary movement of the workers and oppressed, one is left only with "real politics." That is, one is left with coming to accommodation with the existing capitalist and imperialist "realities," with making the "practical" and "realistic" choice of which of the reactionary "real" powers to align oneself to. This is how Mao and the Chinese leaders came to take sides in the inter-imperialist rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Arbitrarily deciding that the Soviet Union was "the main danger," they steered the course towards the counter-revolutionary U.S.-China alliance.

The revisionist "three worlds" theory has its ideological roots in Mao Zedong Thought. Maoism is not an integral theory. It is a confused mixture of a variety of ideological concepts -- rightist, leftist, liberal, anarchist and centrist. At the same time, Maoism is saturated through and through with social-democratic and right-wing revisionist ideas.

The following are some of the anti-Marxist-Leninist hallmarks of Mao Zedong Thought:

* Maoism creates an insurmountable barrier between the democratic (and national liberation) revolutions and the socialist revolution. In place of the Marxist-Leninist theory of the uninterrupted development of the democratic revolution into the socialist revolution, Mao put forward the view that a long period of capitalist economic development is needed between these two stages of the revolution. Nevertheless, China embarked on various social transformations but this idea remained one of the roadblocks that prevented the consolidation of socialism in China.

* Maoism takes a conciliatory stand towards the exploiting classes. One of the ways that this is expressed is that in the developed capitalist countries it puts forward the petty-bourgeois nationalist conceptions of alliance with the bourgeoisie or sections of it. And it is graphically revealed in Mao's thesis of "long term coexistence and mutual supervision" between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie under socialism, and his ridiculous theory that the antagonistic contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie can be transformed into a non-antagonistic one.

* Maoism belittles the leading role of the proletariat and its hegemony in the revolution. For example, Mao denigrated the significance of organizing the proletariat as the vanguard of the revolution with his universal theory of "encircling the cities from the countryside." This was not just a description of the military course of the revolutionary war in China, nor of the unfortunate setbacks in the CPC's work in the cities and other factors particular to the Chinese situation. On the contrary, it was a political strategy that was prescribed as the general and desirable pattern good for all countries, with the possible exception of the imperialist states.

* Mao Zedong Thought contains liberal and anarchist views that disorganize the party of the proletariat and undermine its leading role. Mao's theory of the inevitability of two headquarters in the party at all times and at all levels is a theory that disorganizes the party and leaves it prey to unbridled factionalism. The Maoists present this theory as a safeguard against revisionism, but actually it means giving a free hand to revisionist corruption.

Maoism also presents wrong theses on the relationship between the party and the masses. During the so-called "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," Mao Zedong pushed aside the party altogether. And internationally the Maoist trend counterposed the mass movements to the party and vice versa, undermining the party as the vanguard leader of the mass struggle and the very task of party-building itself.

* Maoism adopts a conciliatory attitude towards revisionism. For a time Mao and the Chinese leaders gained the reputation as stern fighters against revisionism. But in reality they pursued a conciliatory role in the struggle against modern revisionism. They attempted to apply the Maoist concept that revisionism and opportunism are middle forces which can be united with. Thus, they took vacillating stands against first the Yugoslav revisionists, and then the Soviet revisionists, alternately branding them as enemies, falling silent, and even embracing them as friends. As a result of their hesitancy and zigzag course, a great deal of damage was done to the historic struggle against modern revisionism.

Mao Zedong played an enormous historic role in leading the Communist Party of China in the triumph of the Chinese people's revolution. But it was Mao's bourgeois democratic world outlook which blocked the consolidation of socialism in China and paved the way to the eventual complete betrayal of the revolution. Mao Zedong Thought has been the ideological basis for numerous deviations and zigzags of the CPC and for all the antagonistic factions in the Chinese leadership over the last several decades.

The whole Maoist ideological arsenal must be disarmed. The fact that the prestige of the Chinese revisionists has fallen so low and that the Maoist trend internationally is in shambles is no reason for complacency. Over many years the Maoist concepts had much influence and did a great deal of damage to the world revolutionary movement. It is not enough that the Maoist fallacies become discredited; the important thing is that the Maoist theories are repudiated from the point of view of Marxism-Leninism so that it is the Marxist-Leninist theory that replaces them. Otherwise the door is left open to the actual continuation of Maoism while giving up the name of Mao. Or the Maoist influence will be replaced by Soviet revisionism, social-democracy or some other opportunist influence.

The struggle against Maoism must not be stopped halfway. It would be a serious mistake to think that the Maoist influence will dissolve on its own. Nor will it be eliminated with a few slogans and curses. And it has been shown that a wrong approach to the struggle against Maoism poses its own dangers. What is needed is a Marxist-Leninist ideological and political struggle against the whole arsenal of Maoism. This struggle must be carried through to the end to ensure that all the revolutionary work is placed on firm foundations that measure up to the classic teachings of Marxism-Leninism.

C. Against Trotskyism

Trotskyism is another of the opportunist international trends working to undermine the revolutionary working class movement. The trotskyites, both internationally and domestically, and often within a given trotskyite group, are divided up into many different varieties and shades. They make up a hodgepodge of opportunist groupings influenced by social-democracy, revisionism, and every sort of petty-bourgeois and bourgeois political trend. One thing which they all hold in common, however, is that they all call themselves followers of Leon Trotsky. So to understand the nature of contemporary Trotskyism it is useful to refer to the ideological and political characteristics of this notorious renegade from communism.

* From the early days of his political career, a most important feature of Trotsky's stand was that he cursed Leninism and Bolshevism. In 1903 the Marxist party of the Russian working class became divided between its revolutionary Marxist wing known as the Bolsheviks and led by Lenin, and its reformist and opportunist wing known as the Mensheviks. From that time on Trotsky was bitterly hostile to Lenin and the Bolsheviks and raved against Lenin as the leader of the "reactionary wing" of the party. While he rebuked the struggle against opportunism as an alleged expression of "factionalism," and while he regarded himself as allegedly being above factions, actually Trotsky vacillated wildly between factions as he adopted an essentially Menshevik stand. He repeatedly joined on the side of the Mensheviks and liquidators against the Bolsheviks.

Trotsky didn't join the Bolshevik Party until the summer of 1917, the eve of the October Socialist Revolution. But even inside the Bolsheviks' ranks he was in continual conflict with Lenin and his Bolshevik line. He became a leader of the anti-Leninist "opposition."

After Lenin's death Trotsky posed as a great Leninist. Now, instead of directly cursing Leninism, as he had done for the two decades previous, he cursed "Stalinism" in order to continue his crusade against everything that Leninism stands for. Trotsky became one of the bitterest enemies of the Communist International and degenerated to the depths of organizing counter-revolutionary subversion against socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR.

* His repeated denunciations of the Leninist struggle against opportunism were a yellow thread running through Trotsky's infamous political career. Trotsky played the role of a shield for the Mensheviks and other opportunists and he periodically made common cause with them against the revolutionary Leninists. It was Trotsky who tried to put together the ill-famed "August bloc" of all the liquidators to fight the Bolsheviks. And later Trotsky cursed the fight waged by the Communist International against the treachery of social-democracy.

* A particular hallmark of Trotsky's anti-Leninist and opportunist stands was that he covered them in highfalutin phraseology. He was a master of "revolutionary" phrases that cost him nothing. Under this "revolutionary" verbiage Trotsky pursued his accommodation with the reformist social-democrats and his struggle against the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists.

* Trotsky held special hatred for Lenin's principles concerning the role and nature of the proletarian party. He fought the Leninist concepts of democratic centralism, of building a proletarian party with the iron discipline and single will that is required for the class war against the bourgeoisie. Trotsky called Lenin's Bolshevik system of organization a "barracks regime" and a "dictatorship" over the intellectuals by the workers. He abhorred proletarian discipline and espoused an aristocratic petty-bourgeois individualism. Trotsky advocated the typically social-democratic concepts of the party as a loose and amorphous grouping of divergent factions and trends.

Trotsky's theories on the revolution were anti-Leninist through and through.

* Under the signboard of "permanent revolution," Trotsky turned the Marxist concept of the uninterrupted nature of the revolution, and the growing over of the democratic revolution into the socialist revolution, into what Lenin called an "absurdity." Trotsky's "permanent revolution" meant skipping over the democratic revolution under conditions where it was a historical necessity, such as in tsarist Russia. He considered the peasantry to be one reactionary mass and, like all Mensheviks, he rejected the idea of the proletariat becoming the leader of the peasant masses in the democratic revolution.

* Connected to this was Trotsky's hostility towards the national liberation struggles and democratic revolutions among the oppressed peoples under the yoke of imperialism. In particular, Trotsky theorized against the Leninist program of the proletariat becoming the champion and leader of the liberation movement of the oppressed peoples.

* Trotsky rejected Lenin's theory of the uneven development of imperialism and the possibility of building socialism in one (or several) countries. He theorized that it was not possible to build socialism in one (or several) countries without simultaneous socialist revolutions throughout Europe. From the outset he combatted Lenin's program for building socialism in the USSR and preached defeatism.

* Trotsky made a mockery of the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the struggles for partial demands. On the one hand, Trotsky made use of radical-sounding phrases to belittle the importance to the revolutionary movement of the workers' struggles for partial demands and to denounce these struggles as alleged manifestations of reformism. On the other hand, Trotsky took up all the reformist utopias advocated by the social-democrats for patching up capitalism. He painted up these run-of-the-mill reformist schemes as being allegedly incompatible with capitalist rule, and in other flaming "revolutionary" colors. This was the content of Trotsky's anti-Leninist distortions of the concept of the transitional program.

* Trotsky put forward a number of other confused and contradictory theories. He vacillated to the right and to the left and snatched bits and pieces of ideas from different and even warring trends. The underlying consistency in Trotsky's theorizing was its Menshevik and social-democratic essence and its hostility towards Marxist-Leninist communism.

* Contemporary Trotskyism has many variations and sub-trends. Some trotskyite groupings still subscribe to many of Trotsky's particular anti-Leninist theories. Others have dropped a number of Trotsky's absurdities as unneeded baggage. All the trotskyite groupings are characterized by their lack of ideological coherence; by their mimicking of whatever is fashionable; and by their habit of attaching themselves within the general ideological and political orbit of the stronger social-reformist trends -- social-democracy and revisionism.

Some of the other features of contemporary Trotskyism include:

* The trotskyites are totally liquidationist. They abhor the very idea of building a solid Marxist-Leninist vanguard party of the working class. Their concept of the proletarian party, if they have any such concept, is something of a debating society made up of a broad and loose federation of factions. Despite the revolutionary phrasemongering of some, the trotskyites trail helplessly after the labor bureaucrats and other opportunist forces of bourgeois influence on the working class.

* In the past, when the Soviet Union was still a bastion of socialism, the trotskyites were among the most rabid enemies of the socialist system being constructed in the USSR. They cursed the first land of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a "degenerated workers' state." But now, with the restoration of capitalism and the emergence of social-imperialism in the Soviet Union, their term "degenerated workers' state" has become a term of endearment. Most Trotskyites have become big apologists of Soviet revisionism, just as they merge with all revisionism generally.

* The trotskyites oppose the national liberation struggles and the democratic revolutions of the oppressed peoples suffering under imperialist slavery. Either they adopt pseudo-radical phrases to directly ridicule these liberation struggles or, in the guise of supporting the oppressed peoples, they glorify the bourgeois nationalist regimes, including various outright reactionary regimes, that stand in the way of the revolutionary struggles of the masses against imperialism and reaction.

In the U.S. there is an overabundance of trotskyite organizations and grouplets, which, in a broad sense, break down into two general trends. There are the rightist and more openly reformist trotskyites, and then there is a much smaller trend of "left" or "revolutionary" phrasemongers. These two trends are not mutually exclusive, but each brings to the fore different aspects of their common trotskyite opportunism.

While they still call themselves "Marxists" and even "Marxist-Leninists," the more openly reformist trotskyites adopt a typically social-democratic, trade unionist and electoralist approach. They are enthralled to the labor bureaucrats, the soldout black leaders and other misleaders of the workers and oppressed. They use radical phrases to justify their loyalty to these misleaders on the left fringe of the Democratic Party and to cover their prettification of the Democratic Party itself. A number of these groups, notably the Workers World Party and the Socialist Workers Party, act as little helpers of Soviet revisionism in dressing up the Soviet Union, Cuba and other revisionist countries as "socialist." (Others, such as the flabby and ultra-reformist network known as the IS (International Socialists), say that the Soviet Union is capitalist.)

The "revolutionary" phrasemongering trend is no less anti-proletarian and anti-Marxist-Leninist. It also glorifies the labor bureaucracy and other corrupt forces. Its oh-so- radical phrases are not directed against the capitalist class enemy and its lackeys, but instead it directs its phrasemongering against the workers and the mass struggles of the working people. This phrasemongering trend is typified by the Spartacist League. The SL is particularly notorious for its super-"revolutionary" apologetics for the crimes of Soviet revisionism, and its screaming demands that the struggles of the masses the world over must be subordinated to Soviet social-imperialism.

Today in the U.S., as well as in other countries, the trotskyites make up part of the opportunist and liquidationist forces that are undermining the revolutionary movement. This demands ideological and political work to combat their corrosive influence in the mass movements and among the working masses.

D. Against Social-Democracy

The Second Congress calls attention to the growing international activation of social-democracy and the importance of the struggle against it for the world revolutionary movement.

In recent years world social-democracy has been trying to dust itself off and polish itself up with a shiny new image. It is advertising itself as a "third force," an alternative to the "extremes" of both capitalism and of revolutionary proletarian socialism. Social-democracy promises the exploited and oppressed that it can remove the injustices of capitalism "humanely" and "democratically," without the harshness and sacrifice of the class struggle and the revolution. Under these banners social-democracy is being activated to play an ever bigger role in undermining the revolutionary class drive of the working masses in many parts of the world.

Over the last few years in Western Europe we have seen the social-democrats form new governments in France, Portugal, Spain and Greece, and Italy also has a new Socialist prime minister. In most of these countries, the social-democrats came to power with a great fanfare about the "economic and social democracy" they were going to bring to the masses. But in no time they have shown their real face. They are saddling the working masses with the crushing monopoly capitalist offensive. They are imposing capitalist austerity measures on the workers, some of which are even more severe than those of the preceding conservative governments. They are strengthening the hand of political reaction. And they are eagerly participating in the U.S.-led NATO war buildup, despite the fact that this war buildup has filled the streets of Western Europe with the angry protests of millions of working people.

For example, remember the big hoopla about the new era the "socialist" government of Francois Mitterrand was to bring to France. Now the hoopla is over and the Mitterrand regime is showing itself to be simply Reaganism with a social-democratic mask. The "left" government of the social-democrats and their revisionist "Communist" Party junior partners has adopted an economic policy of squeezing the workers and the poor and enriching the billionaires that is based on the same "supply-side" concepts as Reaganomics. It is suppressing demonstrations and attacking the immigrants. And while Mitterrand backs Reagan's Euromissiles to the hilt, he is also building up the French nuclear arsenals, and is dispatching French troops in imperialist adventures in Chad and Lebanon.

The social-democrats throughout Western Europe, North America, Japan, and the other developed capitalist countries, continue to play a major role. In most of these countries they have a powerful grip on the trade unions and are forcing class collaboration on the workers in the face of the capitalist offensive. The social-democrats also have considerable influence in the anti-war movements and in the other social movements, which they are working to undermine and corrupt with their bourgeois pacifism, social reformism and national chauvinism.

The social-democrats are also trying to spread their influence into Eastern Europe. They paint themselves up as the opponents of the revisionist-capitalist tyranny there, only to try to hitch the opposition movements to the enslaving drive of Western imperialism. They have had their greatest measure of success in this in undermining the workers' struggle in Poland, where the social-democratic advisors to the Solidarity organization have tried to convince the Polish people that their liberation will be brought to them by the likes of Ronald Reagan, the Pope, and the rest of western imperialist reaction.

In all the developed capitalist countries social-democracy is showing that it remains the same crusty old bulwark of capitalism that it has been since the days of the First World War. It is still providing the same old service to-the monopolists, the reactionaries and the militarist generals of providing a touch of "humane" and "democratic socialist" tinsel on their man-eating system of exploitation, tyranny and aggressive war.

Social-democracy also appears in the dependent countries. The West European and many other social-democratic organizations internationally are gathered together under the umbrella of the Socialist International. Over the last several years the SI, with the greater part of its budget coming from West German finance capital, has launched a new "strategy towards the third world." This is a major drive to activate new social-democratic forces and to link up with the existing social-reformists and other compatible forces in Latin America, Asia and Africa. This drive has involved making links with the liberation movements in the Southern African countries and in other regions. However, its main target has been Latin America and the Caribbean.

Social-democracy's "Latin American offensive" has included the setting up of new social-democratic parties such as the Labor Party in Brazil and similar organizations in other countries. More frequently it has meant establishing or consolidating ties with already existing social-democratic and social-reformist type parties. The Second International now has ties with some two dozen parties in the region. The Second International parties are now in power in the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica and have been in and out of power in a number of other countries. The social- democratic government of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) maintains warm ties to U.S. imperialism, and it does not hesitate to shoot down the workers, peasants and students who are struggling against the growing oppression and exploitation of the big capitalists and landlords and the U.S. multinationals. The SI's National Liberation Movement government in Costa Rica is a close ally of the Reagan regime and has given the CIA-mercenaries a free hand to operate against Nicaragua from Costa Rican territory.

The new strategy of the SI calls for paying lip service to the liberation struggle against oligarchic tyranny and military dictatorships. But in actuality, the social-democrats are striving to undermine the revolutionary upheaval with their doctrines of class peace and reconciliation with the fascists and exploiters. From Central America to Chile, the Second International is bringing pressure to bear on the workers and oppressed to hinder them from breaking free from the grips of exploitation and imperialist slavery.

The penetration of social-democracy into the movements of the oppressed peoples of Latin America and other regions doesn't show that it has now become more "progressive," as some apologists of social-democracy try to claim. On the contrary, it shows that the struggle against social-democratic sabotage and betrayal is becoming an ever more important front of the revolutionary struggle of the working and oppressed masses worldwide.

In the U.S. we find the social-democratic trend tied to the Democratic Party. Their main role is to paint up the monopoly capitalists' Democratic Party and the soldout trade union bureaucrats in "progressive" and even "socialist" colors.

There are two American organizations affiliated to the Socialist International. There is the right-wing Social- Democrats, USA, made up of cold war reactionaries who serve as ideologues for the more openly warmongering Democrats and the more reactionary AFL-CIO chieftains. The Social-Democrats, USA supported the U.S. war in Viet Nam and backed the criminal Nixon.

The SI's more favored group, however, is Michael Harrington's Democratic Socialists of America. The DSA is made up of mainstream social-democrats connected to the more liberal Democratic politicians and labor bureaucrats. The DSA is the recent product of the merger of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the New American Movement, and it hopes that with the facelift provided by this merger and by shining up its image it will build up its network within the Democratic Party.

There are a number of other mainstream social-democratic groups and voices, such as the periodical In These Times or Tom Hayden's Campaign for Economic Democracy. These are part of a general social-democratic milieu, out of which there are some groups that profess positions to the left of the mainstream, but they don't break from the bounds of social-democratic policy (prettification of the Democrats, the labor bureaucracy, etc.).

Thus, in the U.S. too we find that social-democracy continues to be activated as a dangerous reformist influence undermining the class independence of the proletariat, and holding in check the revolutionary ferment among the working masses.

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VI. ON THE INTERNATIONAL MARXIST-LENINIST MOVEMENT

A. The Second Congress Salutes the Marxist-Leninist Communists of the World

The Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA is but a single column in the world army of Marxist-Leninist communism. Throughout the world, revolutionary communists work with courage and determination to overthrow the old world of imperialism, capitalism, revisionism and reaction and replace it with the new world of socialism and communism. The Second Congress hails the Marxist-Leninist communists and parties of the world and sends them an enthusiastic red salute.

The proletariat is an international class. In the struggle for the emancipation of labor, the various national contingents of the class conscious proletariat are bound together by unshakeable bonds of class solidarity and proletarian internationalism. At the head of the workers' struggle stands the communist vanguard. Ever since the epoch-making Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia of 1917, every consistent working class revolutionary must be a Marxist-Leninist. Today the revisionist betrayal in Russia and China and elsewhere has not eliminated the Marxist-Leninist communists. All around the world, the revolutionary Marxist-Leninists can be found, undaunted, struggling to lead the proletariat and all the working people to rise up against exploitation and oppression, against Western capitalism and against revisionist capitalism.

The Marxist-Leninist communists work unceasingly to build up genuine communist parties, proletarian parties of the Leninist type. Where such a party doesn't yet exist, they exert their utmost efforts to founding or reconstituting such a party, for the proletarian party is the most precious weapon of the working class, the indispensable tool for it to stand up as a class in its own right. Where Marxist-Leninist parties exist, the communists work unceasingly to defend and strengthen them. There is no such thing as a true Marxist-Leninist communist who does not center his activity on upholding and building the proletarian party. This requires sweat and effort, for the class enemy aims his blows in the first place against the proletarian parties, seeking to decapitate the proletariat and leave it leaderless.

The Marxist-Leninist communist parties are parties of struggle, parties of revolution. Wherever the revolutionary barricades go up, there the Marxist-Leninists can be found, rushing to throw themselves into the very fore of the battle. Nor do the Marxist-Leninist communists lose heart in the trying times of stagnation and slow progress or of reaction and setbacks. In such times too the Marxist-Leninist parties can be found upholding the red banner of revolution, teaching the proletariat not to lose heart but to systematically organize itself for the class struggle.

The Marxist-Leninist activists dedicate their lives selflessly for the triumph of the great cause of the proletariat. Just in the last few years since the First Congress of our Party, we have seen communists all over the world heroically lay down their lives for the revolution. Hundreds and thousands of Marxist-Leninists have faced imprisonment, slaughter or execution in the dungeons of the fascist generals in Turkey, under the medieval tortures of the Khomeini regime in Iran, from the guns of the reactionary bourgeois regimes in Latin America, and elsewhere around the world.

The Marxist-Leninists face not just the savage physical repression by the bourgeoisie, but also the massive propaganda barrage of the exploiters. The last years have been marked by a stepped-up campaign of lies, slander and boasting by the reactionary bourgeoisie. From Reagan's vow of war on Marxism-Leninism, to the ravings of "Iron Lady'' Thatcher, fascists like Pinochet, and religious bigots like Falwell, Khomeini and the Pope, the reactionaries all call Marxism-Leninism the arch-devil. The capitalists and their hired scribblers and shouters are going all out to cast mud on the working class, the revolution and communism. The revisionist bourgeoisie is also doing its best to twist Marxism-Leninism into something ugly, and it is competing with the Western bourgeoisie to cast mud at the true communists of the world. But the bourgeoisie will never succeed in wiping out the glorious legacy of communism and revolutionary struggle. And it is first and foremost the Marxist-Leninist communists who stand up against the ideological campaign of the bourgeoisie and bring the clear light of truth on world events. It is the Marxist-Leninist communists who show that imperialism, revisionism and capitalism have feet of clay and who keep alive the great idea of the historical mission of the proletariat. Disseminating the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, they bring new hope and consciousness to the masses of the working people.

The Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA is the American contingent of the international Marxist-Leninist movement. It is proud to militate side by side with the Marxist-Leninist communists of other lands who bend every effort to organize the proletariat, to build up Leninist parties, and to lead the revolutionary storms. It supports and defends the struggles of the Marxist-Leninist communists and opposes the attacks of imperialism and revisionism against them.

The Second Congress pledges the militant solidarity of our Party to the Marxist-Leninist communist parties of every land. To the communist militants throughout the world, the Second Congress sends the revolutionary greetings of our Party. It declares that the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA will uphold its fighting tradition of doing its utmost to build the international Marxist-Leninist movement.

B. Work for the Strengthening of the International Marxist-Leninist Movement

Since its founding at the First Congress, the Marxist-Leninist Party has played an active role inside the international Marxist-Leninist movement. The Second Congress paid close attention to the situation inside the international movement. It took account not just of the successes, but also of the setbacks, not just of achievements, but also of the difficulties and dangers.

The Second Congress holds that the present situation requires all Marxist-Leninist parties and activists around the world to fight for the strengthening of the international Marxist-Leninist movement. Now is not a time for complacency. Now is a time when all those who truly love the international Marxist-Leninist movement must pay close attention to the burning issues that have arisen and must strive hard to overcome the difficulties and roadblocks in the way of progress.

In the last years of the 1970's, during the height of the international struggle against the "three worlds" theory and Chinese revisionism, there were many hopes for a big increase of international contacts and cooperation. These expectations were voiced in the various international rallies and meetings of the time. But these hopes have been disappointed in the first years of the 1980's. Nor has the international Marxist-Leninist movement -- as a force in itself and not just as individual parties working in relative isolation -- played the role it should on the major issues of current world politics.

As well, during the first years of the 1980's, various rightist and liquidationist currents have become fashionable in the revolutionary movement of a number of countries. This has placed pressure on the Marxist-Leninist parties, for liquidationism is first and foremost directed against party-building and the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist political stand. Several parties have denounced the phenomenon of liquidationism in their countries. But, in general, the struggle has not been waged with sufficient intensity, nor with the necessary ideological depth; and there have been various manifestations of the pressure of liquidationist and petty-bourgeois nationalist views inside the international Marxist-Leninist movement itself.

These problems show that the various vexed questions and controversies that have arisen inside the international Marxist-Leninist movement cannot simply be brushed under the rug. This is also shown by the fact that recent world events have repeatedly given rise to differences among the parties. For example, the wave of mass demonstrations against U.S./NATO missiles in Western Europe was followed by a polemic between two of the Marxist-Leninist parties of Western Europe on work in the anti-war movement. The reactionary war between the British imperialists and the fascist generals of Argentina over the Falkland (or Malvinas) Islands and the complicated situation facing the working people of Iran have also given rise to controversies among the parties.

It is necessary to confront these issues openly in order to strengthen the international Marxist-Leninist movement. One cannot defend the world Marxist-Leninist movement by closing one's eyes to the burning questions of the present and hoping they will go away. Instead all Marxist-Leninist parties and activists must straightforwardly and boldly work to resolve them. The resolution of these issues will arouse the enthusiasm of the Marxist-Leninist communists throughout the world and lead to new successes for the international Marxist-Leninist movement. It will result in more class conscious workers and other revolutionaries rallying around the Marxist-Leninist movement.

In our opinion, the present tasks for strengthening the international Marxist-Leninist movement include the following four fronts of work:

It is essential that all the Marxist-Leninist parties strive hard to develop closer contacts with other parties and more international cooperation. The parties must make use of a number of different methods of exchanging views and developing fraternal collaboration. We are in favor of various types of meetings between the parties as appropriate, including both bilateral meetings and multilateral meetings, such as regional meetings and general meetings. Naturally, what is needed are not empty, ceremonial meetings, but real, working meetings. As well, there should be better utilization of the valuable body of Marxist-Leninist literature from the parties and a better exchange of the party journals. The circulation of literature from the parties in other countries is not only essential for the exchange of experience among the parties but it also creates enthusiasm among the masses and encourages the growth of proletarian internationalist sentiments.

Furthermore, there should be international cooperation in the struggle against the class enemy on major world issues. This is not a matter of elaborate international schemes nor of a mechanical equalization of the slogans and forms of struggle in different countries, but of the use of elementary forms of cooperation. Whether it is a matter of condemning U.S. imperialist aggression in Central America, working to guide the upsurge of the anti-war movement in Western Europe and elsewhere, or utilizing the economic and political crises in Poland and Yugoslavia, and the treachery of Cuba towards the Central American revolutions, to expose the bankruptcy of revisionism, international cooperation would strengthen the work of each Marxist-Leninist party. It would mean that the international Marxist-Leninist movement speaks with a strong voice on the major issues of world politics, and it would help attract all proletarian and progressive forces to the side of revolutionary Marxism- Leninism.

All the parties must do their utmost to consider and resolve the burning questions in the international Marxist-Leninist movement. These questions cannot be swept aside. They must be dealt with consciously and openly by all Marxist-Leninist parties and class conscious workers. Unless the controversies and vexed questions of the current movement are dealt with, all efforts, no matter how sincere, at strengthening the international Marxist-Leninist movement or increasing proletarian internationalist cooperation run the risk of being empty posturing and will sooner or later evaporate into thin air.

In our view, it is the Marxist-Leninist theory that provides the basis for resolving the vexed questions of today. The objective situations of today and the experience of the revolutionary movement must be examined in the light of the ideas of the Marxist-Leninist classics. The unity of the international Marxist-Leninist movement finds its granite foundations in the Marxist-Leninist theory, which is the only scientific guide to the class struggle and the revolution.

The struggle against the various revisionist and opportunist currents must be stepped up. The struggle against revisionism is a life and death struggle for the international Marxist-Leninist movement. Yet the early 1980's saw a certain falling off of the ideological struggle against revisionism. The struggle against the "three worlds" theory and Maoism was not carried through to the end, and this has been the source of many evils. As well, the struggle against Soviet revisionism must be stepped up. Among other things, the Soviet revisionists have been trying to make hay out of the fiasco of Maoism and the rise of various rightist and liquidationist currents in many countries. The continuation and deepening of the great polemic against Soviet revisionism that began over two decades ago is still a burning task of the international Marxist-Leninist movement.

Furthermore, the struggle against revisionism does not consist simply of opposing the various revisionist trends as they manifest themselves internationally. It includes the struggle against the domestic revisionist and opportunist groupings of one's own country. Unless one fights "one's own" opportunist and revisionist groupings, the fight against revisionism is nothing but a fraud.

Finally, there is the task of assessing the history of the struggle to build up the international Marxist-Leninist movement against the treacheries of the Soviet and other revisionists. The open split with Soviet revisionism began over two decades ago. Since then, the Marxist-Leninist communists have had both successes and setbacks. At the height of the struggle against the "three worlds" theory and Maoism at the end of the 1970's, the task was posed internationally of assessing the course of the struggle against Soviet revisionism. The importance of this assessment is that it brings to light deviations and departures from Marxism-Leninism that weakened the struggle and thus helps to ensure that in the future the struggle will be based firmly on the classic ideas of Marxism-Leninism. And indeed, the exposure of Maoism did bring to light the cause of a number of difficulties and weaknesses that had hindered the struggle against Soviet revisionism. But the full assessment of the history of the international Marxist-Leninist movement and of the struggle against Soviet revisionism was never completed.

The Second Congress pledges that our Party will continue to play an active role in the international Marxist-Leninist movement. The Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA will strive with all its might to defend the interests of the international Marxist-Leninist movement, to take part in resolving the vexed questions of the movement, to carry out its proletarian internationalist responsibilities and to stand steadfast as a loyal contingent of international revolutionary Marxism-Leninism.

[Photo: On April 17,1977, an internationalist rally of Marxist- Leninist parties from around the world was held in Lisbon, Portugal. Over 15,000 people attended this * militant rally at the Campo Pequeno arena.]

C. On the Relations Between the Marxist-Leninist Parties

In the latter 1970's, in the struggle against the "three worlds" theory and Maoism, the arrogant and harmful stands of the Chinese revisionists towards the proletarian parties of other lands were widely condemned. The question of the norms that should govern relations among Marxist-Leninist parties received much attention. It is still an important issue, as the Marxist-Leninist parties of the world search for ways of drawing closer to one another. In our view, the following points are among the principles dictated by Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism for governing these relations.

It is essential to inculcate in the class conscious workers and revolutionary activists the fervent conviction of being part of the single, international army of labor. This is a fundamental principle of proletarian internationalism. Put into practice, it creates great enthusiasm among and stiffens the fighting spirit of the revolutionary proletarians. This conception has always guided the work of our Party, and its predecessors, right from the founding of the American Communist Workers Movement (Marxist-Leninist) in 1969. We have consistently held that the American Marxist-Leninists are but one contingent of the world Marxist- Leninist movement.

The unity of the Marxist-Leninist communists of the world is not simply a formal or organizational question, but is based on their common struggle against the class enemy and their adherence to the Marxist-Leninist ideology. Proletarian internationalism is based on the fact that the proletariat has the same basic class interests all over the world and the same historical mission of liberating itself from the rule of the exploiters. The class struggle is a world struggle. Thus the Marxist-Leninist parties, as the proletarian vanguard, find themselves in battle with different sections of the common capitalist and revisionist enemy. Whenever the class struggle is toned down, just to that extent any unity tends to become purely formal and meaningless. As Lenin stressed: "There is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism, and that is -- working wholeheartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one's own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy, and material aid) this struggle, this, and only this, in every country without exception." (Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 75, the emphasis is Lenin's)

The Marxist-Leninist communist movement has developed in fierce struggle against the revisionist betrayal of revolution and socialism. The defense of Marxism-Leninism and the unyielding struggle against the revisionist and opportunist trends is essential for the unity of the Marxist- Leninist parties. As Lenin showed: "The concept of 'adherents of internationalism' is devoid of all content and meaning, if we do not concretely amplify it; any step towards such concrete amplification, however, will be an enumeration of features of hostility to opportunism.... An adherent of internationalism who is not at the same time a most consistent and determined adversary of opportunism is a phantom, nothing more." (Ibid., Vol. 21, p. 156)

There must be concrete bonds of solidarity and cooperation between the parties. International unity is a basic principle of communism. It is vital to increase the connection between the parties in the course of fighting the class enemy; this is one of the important tasks of the present. Our Party has enthusiastically supported those initiatives that have promoted closer collaboration between the parties. Among other things, we support joint meetings and joint statements, conduct vigorous solidarity work in support of the other parties, work hard to promote the exchange of literature among parties and the wide circulation of international Marxist-Leninist literature in the U.S., and would like to see the development of joint campaigns against imperialism, revisionism, capitalism and reaction.

We hold that the theory of Marxism-Leninism is international and that it is necessary to study and assess international experience. Cooperation in theoretical matters is part and parcel of developing close relations between Marxist-Leninist parties. A serious attitude to theory is incompatible with either mechanically copying whatever happens to be fashionable or with ignoring the views and hard-won experience of other parties. Our Party has consistently sought to bring the advanced ideas of the international Marxist-Leninist movement to the class conscious workers and revolutionaries in the U.S.

Dealing with the burning questions and controversies inside the international Marxist-Leninist movement is, in our view, a vital part of international cooperation. In the last few years, our Party has paid close attention both to the burning questions of the international Marxist-Leninist movement and to the methods being, used internationally to deal with these controversies. It is our conclusion that it is the orthodox Marxist-Leninist methods that must be used. Leninism castigates severely both those who throw mud at the communist movement and those who slur over the disputed questions and try to hide questions of principle under the cover of a hypocritical silence. Leninism teaches that we must not fear the raving of the enemies of communism, who dance and leap hysterically over the differences in the Marxist-Leninist ranks, but must instead calmly and boldly rely on enhancing the political consciousness of the working class and the party members. Lenin set a brilliant example of the discussion of the vexed questions of the international movement of his day in such works as What Should Not Be Copied from the German Labor Movement; his articles on the movement against social-chauvinism in World War I; "Left-Wing" Communism, An Infantile Disorder, his letters to the communist parties and workers' movements of various countries; and so forth. The Communist International also made effective use of open discussion of the burning issues before the entire world proletarian movement in its work of building up communist parties.

We are aware that other views on this question are being advocated. For example, there are those who hold that the burning questions of the present-day Marxist-Leninist movement must not be discussed in public. They think that the rank-and-file communist should be fed on "official optimism," as Lenin sarcastically called it, while the real issues are settled, insofar as they ever are settled, behind the scenes. According to this view, the worst crime is to refer honestly and openly to the vexed questions of the day, especially if the name of a party is used.

The method of "official optimism" is advertised as the only means to protect the unity of the parties. But, in reality, we have seen over and over again the sad results of "official optimism" and backstage maneuvering. It has not in the slightest preserved international unity; on the contrary, it has only served to aggravate the problems between parties and to foster the use of various truly backward methods of solving differences. It has not served to protect the weaker parties; on the contrary, these methods have repeatedly proved of use to dubious elements seeking to prey on the parties. It has not kept differences away from the eyes and ears of the class enemy, but it has served to help keep the issues of principle away from the eyes and ears of the class conscious workers and Marxist-Leninist activists. "Official optimism" has proved to be a roadblock to the struggle to put the issues of principle to the fore and to eliminate rumormongering and abuse. Life itself has repeatedly shown: either the Leninist method of combining militant and fervent solidarity with wide discussion of the controversial issues of principle, or the law of the jungle and imitation of the unprincipled methods of the social- democratic and revisionist parties.

There must be resolute opposition to international factionalism. The world's Marxist-Leninists must always demarcate themselves sharply from the revisionist and opportunist currents. But there should be no attempts to divide the international Marxist-Leninist movement itself up into special "international trends." Marxism-Leninism, revolutionary Marxist-Leninist communism as opposed to revisionism, should be the "international trend" that all Marxist-Leninists belong to.

Our Party has fought hard against international factionalism. There are those who claim to be Marxist-Leninists but who speak more or less openly about their desire to build up their own "international trend" and who demand "special relationships" with this or that party. In particular, the present leadership of the Communist Party of Canada (M-L) and various of its international followers are among such factionalists. These factionalists have been trying, in vain, to destroy our Party because, among other reasons, we refuse to take part in building their "international trend," we refuse to attack other parties at their secret command, and we refuse to allow them to violate our organizational integrity. We will not be part of their special "international trend" or any other factional conspiracy. We are not factionalists, but revolutionary Marxist-Leninists. We have had to fight very hard to uphold this stand, but we will never regret it nor retreat from it. Only those who keep their honor intact can fight the class enemy.

The organizational integrity of the parties mast be upheld. This does not, in our view, contradict the building of close relations between Marxist-Leninist parties. On the contrary, the maintenance of the organizational integrity of the individual parties should enhance genuine democratic centralism in the international Marxist-Leninist movement.

The question of organizational integrity has been of vital importance for our Party. We would not be here today and holding the Second Congress if we had not zealously guarded the organizational integrity of our Party. We have found that those who have tried to violate the organizational integrity of our Party invariably did so in the interests of international factionalism, not in the interests of true centralism and international unity.

There must be only one Marxist-Leninist party in each country. The proletarian movement needs unified leadership. Only a unified, class conscious vanguard can successfully lead the entire working class and revolutionary movement of the country and concentrate the energies of the working masses so that they make the supreme effort required to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie.

Furthermore, the genuine communist party must not be a federation of different national groups, but must unite unconditionally the workers of all nationalities of the given country. If the proletarian party were simply a federation of national groups, or if there were separate parties for the workers of different nationalities in the same country, it would lead to chaos, to splintering the working class movement and reducing it to a weak and fragmented federation. Instead, the party must unite the workers of all nationalities and itself vigorously lead the struggle against national oppression.

Although there must be only one party for each country, sometimes a party has to have certain organization in other countries. The Bolsheviks, for example, had certain party organization abroad prior to 1917. But this is not incompatible with the principle of one party for one country, if a distinction is maintained between the work that is part of the revolutionary movement in the host country, and that hence should be led by the party of that country, and the work that is a direct part of the revolutionary work in the homeland, even if circumstances force it to be conducted outside the homeland. Our Party extends the hand of fraternal proletarian internationalist cooperation to such overseas party organizations of other parties.

[Photo: Lenin at the First Congress of the Third Communist International, March 1919.]

D. On the Communist Party of Canada (M-L)

The leadership of the Communist Party of Canada (M-L) broke relations with our immediate predecessor, the Central Organization of U.S. Marxist-Leninists, on December 5, 1979. Their purpose was to prevent the imminent founding of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA and to subjugate us to their deviationist views. After the successful and enthusiastic founding of our Party on January 1, 1980 at the First Congress, the leadership of CPC(M-L) stepped up its war on our Party. They utilized a variety of sick and unprincipled methods, engaging in wrecking activities, back room conspiracies and gutter politics. Our Party has not only rebuffed these savage activities of the leadership of CPC(M-L), but has also uncovered the Maoist and liquidationist views that lie behind their bitter hostility to us.

In our view, the controversy between our Party and CPC(M-L) has general significance for the international Marxist-Leninist movement. The issues at stake involve many of the vexed questions of the present-day international movement: whether the struggle against Maoism and Chinese revisionism should be carried through to the end; the norms of relations between parties; the questions of strategy and tactics for the revolution; etc. The deviations and blunders of CPC(M-L) have provided a concentrated expression of liquidationism, petty-bourgeois nationalism and international factionalism.

The repudiation of CPC(M-L)'s theoretical and political blunders has been, in the period between the First and Second Congress, a major source of theoretical clarification for our Party. It has aroused the enthusiasm of the comrades and cleared the way for a deeper grasp of Marxist- Leninist principles. The Second Congress heartily endorses the detailed articles published in The Workers' Advocate explaining the basis of the contradiction between the MLP, USA and CPC(M-L). The course of the controversy and the main issues are sketched out in the article "The Truth About the Relations Between the MLP,USA and the CPC(M-L)" and elaborated in a number of other articles.

The immediate issues behind the split were as follows:

1) The leadership of CPC(M-L) was dead set against the struggle of our Party against the American opportunist groupings and denounced the slogan "Build the Marxist- Leninist Party Without the Social-Chauvinists and Against the Social-Chauvinists." They demanded that we stop the polemic against opportunism, especially the polemic against the centrist groupings. In general, they wanted us to give up our struggle against Chinese revisionism in all but name, and they sought to force our Party into accommodation with this or that social-democratic or opportunist grouping. They fought against giving the struggle against opportunism and revisionism any ideological content through their notorious theorizing against "ideological struggle" and other means.

2) They demanded a "special relationship" with our Party in which our Party was supposed to submit unconditionally and unhesitatingly to the whims of the moment of CPC(M-L)'s top leadership and in which all criticism of CPC(M-L) was to be banned as allegedly the work of "agent-provocateurs." They were infuriated at our resolute upholding of the organizational integrity of our Party and at our insistence that the relations between the two Parties should be governed by the norms established by Marxism- Leninism and proletarian internationalism.

3) The above two issues are both related to the polycentrist and factionalist conception of the leadership of CPC(M-L) that the international Marxist-Leninist movement is divided into separate and distinct "international trends." They wanted to consolidate an "international trend" centered on CPC(M-L), a trend that would obey the baton of the leadership of CPC(M-L). Their demand for a "special relationship" with our Party was part of their efforts to bludgeon our Party into being part of their special "international trend." They bitterly resented our refusal to take part in factional activities such as denouncing other Marxist-Leninist parties at their secret urging.

Behind these immediate issues lay CPC(M-L)'s deviationist views, which expressed themselves, at the end of 1979, as liquidationism. Just prior to brutally attacking our Party in December 1979, the CC of CPC(M-L) raised the banner of liquidationism at their 7th Plenum in mid- November 1979. At the 7th Plenum and in the subsequent New Year's speeches, the leadership of CPC(M-L) ridiculed party-building as the line of "getting organized''; sneered at the Marxist-Leninist organizational norms as "so many rules and regulations that [one's] hands and feet are tied in knots''; denounced the struggle against revisionism, and the ideological struggle in general, as a "diversion'' that paralyzed the Marxist-Leninists in the 1970's; made a fetish of electoralism as the latest way to promise the rank and file that quick breakthroughs were at hand; and so forth.

This flaunting of liquidationist blunders was not an accident. It was based on CPC(M-L)'s longstanding Maoist positions. In 1979 CPC(M-L) condemned Maoism, but only in name, while insisting all the more strongly on such Maoist theories as downplaying the class struggle; proposing a non-socialist sort of revolution for such an advanced capitalist country and imperialist power as Canada; searching for sections of the bourgeoisie to unite with; adopting a non-serious and pragmatic attitude towards the struggle against opportunism and emptying it of any ideological content; combining semi-anarchist cursing with rightism and tailism in the approach to the mass movements; vacillating between denouncing the economic struggle on one hand and economism and the search for positions in the labor bureaucracy on the other hand; and so forth.

Fighting to uphold these positions, the 7th Plenum of November 1979 reduced the criticism of Maoism to denunciation of "petty-bourgeois 'leftism' " and put forward liquidationism as the way of "overcoming the adverse influence of 'Mao Zedong Thought.' '' This was indeed "Maoism without Mao," for most Maoist and Chinese revisionist groupings themselves sum up the 1970's by criticizing themselves for leftist excesses and prescribing liquidationism as the cure. Maoism is indeed a mixture of various blunders, from left to right, from anarchist and adventurist to reformist and capitulationist. But its overall nature is revisionism, right opportunism, as the notorious "three worlds" theory shows.

As a result of these Maoist and liquidationist stands, CPC(M-L) has degenerated further during the last four years and suffered many fiascoes. Our Party adopted a cautious attitude towards the CPC(M-L), despite their savage attacks on us, because we put the interests of the proletarian revolution above everything. We would have preferred that CPC(M-L) learned from its blunders and rectified. But instead CPC(M-L) has departed farther and farther from Marxism-Leninism.

Thus CPC(M-L)'s deviations have solidified into hardened trends, characterizing the entire content of their activity. Their petty-bourgeois nationalism has run wild, and they have even reverted to "three worldist" stands on world issues. Their liquidationism has corrupted what was left of their organizational structure, depoliticized their ranks, and left them a disorganized mess. They have continued keeping any ideological content from the struggle against opportunism, and they combine empty screeching and even sectarian head-bashing brawls with pragmatic schemes for accommodation with opportunism. They have continued, in their approach to the mass movements, combining semi-anarchist sneering with pragmatic schemes for breakthroughs by pandering to backward ideas or opportunist groupings.

It has reached the point that they are no better or no worse than any number of opportunist groups that have appeared and disappeared in the left movement. They have lost the right to be regarded as a Marxist-Leninist party, even a deviating one. At this point, for CPC(M-L) to rectify would mean for it to rebuild itself into an essentially new party. But there is now no reason to assume that the impetus for reestablishing a Marxist-Leninist party of the Canadian proletariat will come from inside CPC(M-L) rather than from outside.

How did CPC(M-L) get into this mess?

CPC(M-L)'s roots stretch back into the 1960's. They are descended from a small group of university students and faculty, called the Internationalists, which existed on the left fringe of social-democracy in the youth movement. They were not particularly distinguished from other groups, other than by their insistence that, no matter what political beliefs they happened to believe in at any time, they deserved to be the international leaders of the movement.

At the end of the 1960's, this group declared its support for Marxism-Leninism and the international Marxist- Leninist movement, declared that the working class was the motive force of the revolution, declared in favor of party-building and against various opportunist and neo-revisionist trends, etc. This was a crucial step forward, and it led to the formation of the Canadian Communist Movement (M-L) in 1969 and then the Communist Party of Canada (M-L) in March 1970. It rallied to them, over the years, a number of sincere and dedicated activists who wanted to devote their lives to the cause of revolutionary Marxism- Leninism. It was only after CPC(M-L)'s predecessors had declared for Marxism-Leninism and the international Marxist-Leninist communist movement that our predecessors, in mid-1969, first came into contact with them.

Despite their declaration that now the genuine communist party of the Canadian proletariat once again existed, there were major problems with the work, organizational methods and theoretical stands of CPC(M-L). These problems could have been overcome step by step if CPC (M-L) had worked conscientiously to rectify their work in the light of the Marxist-Leninist classics, if they had combined the experience of the revolutionary struggle with the Marxist-Leninist theory. But, time has proved, the top leadership of CPC(M-L) betrayed the rank and file by taking a cavalier and lackadaisical attitude to Marxism-Leninism.

The repudiation of "three worldism" and Maoism in the international Marxist-Leninist movement was a critical turning point for CPC(M-L). It gave CPC(M-L) a golden opportunity to rectify its work and discard opportunist carryovers. But the leadership of CPC(M-L), while discarding Mao's name, insisted all the more stubbornly on upholding all their main Maoist theories.

CPC(M-L) not only failed to rectify, but they moved backwards. In the prevailing conditions in Canada and most of the world, defense of Maoism led to liquidationism. Thus, at the 7th Plenum of the Central Committee of CPC(M-L), in mid-November 1979, CPC(M-L) turned to liquidationism. They simultaneously stepped up their hostile pressure on our Party. Within a month, they declared that they had "no more patience'' and they declared war on our Party, hoping to force us to toe their Maoist and liquidationist line.

The sad results of CPC(M-L)'s opportunism teach a vital lesson: the need for loyal adherence to Marxism- Leninism and the interests of the revolution. It is CPC (M-L)'s leadership's hypocritical attitude to Marxism- Leninism, which they regard as a convenient slogan to ward off criticism but which they reject in practice, that has proved CPC(M-L)'s undoing. Today the CPC(M-L) has, to a large extent, reverted back to where it was in the 1960's -- a left fringe of the petty-bourgeois nationalist and left social-democratic forces.

The Second Congress militantly declares that, irrespective of the tragedy that has befallen CPC(M-L), our Party will uphold its tradition of close relations with the Marxist-Leninists of Canada. We believe that the proletarian internationalist unity of the communists of Canada and the U.S. is a potent factor for the development of the proletarian socialist revolution in these two neighboring countries, the proletarians of which are linked by many fraternal, historic ties. The Second Congress expresses the conviction that fraternal bonds will again be established between the Marxist-Leninists of Canada and the U.S. And it points out that our Party is not hostile to the rank-and-file members of CPC(M-L), but only to Maoism, liquidationism and petty-bourgeois nationalism and to wrecking activity. We hope that our patient and detailed ideological work will help the rank-and-file members of CPC(M-L) break out of the liquidationist, Maoist and petty-bourgeois nationalist mold that has been forced upon them. Meanwhile, our fraternal duty to the brother Marxist-Leninists of Canada requires us to state publicly and clearly that CPC(M-L) itself can no longer be regarded as a Marxist-Leninist party and that the burning task of Canadian Marxist-Leninists is to reestablish a true communist party on firm Marxist-Leninist foundations.

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