Before further discussion of the relationship between U.S. communists’ theoretical and practical tasks, we must also consider work in a third realm, the organizational.[1] For many comrades it goes without saying that we should be in organizations large enough to have members in a wide geographical area, if not throughout the country, organized in a democratic-centralist form. Others seem to be satisfied with organizing in small circles and waiting for higher forms of organization to develop spontaneously some day. Neither view corresponds to the current needs and potential of communists outside the existing parties.
There is a host of reasons why it is wrong to be satisfied with separate small circles. As others have pointed out before us, individual collectives and local organizations engage in a tremendous duplication of effort as each tries to sort out the many line questions facing the movement. Moreover, comrades in one group, who may be floundering on some question, are usually unable to benefit from the better grasp which comrades in another circle have acquired. And if communists were undertaking serious study of this society, we would certainly be duplicating each others’ efforts in this area of work.
Moreover, neither social investigation nor development of line can be all-sided and correct if we are each hemmed in by the limitations of our own local experience. Puzzling problems of practical work among the masses now need to be solved by each group separately, usually based on a series of painful mistakes which a particular collective may or may not be able to evaluate objectively. We get no benefit from each others’ experiences handling problems of internal organization. The massive output of communist literature in this movement never centers around good polemics on one or two main questions, permitting comrades to follow the debate and eventually unify the great majority on correct answers. As it is now, who among us is even able to keep up with the literature?
Most important, we are not working in concert, according to an agreed-on plan, to help create the conditions for forming a party.
The small-circle form of organization is ineffective. Acceptance of it most often manifests a right error of passive acquiesecence in our primitiveness, assuming that somehow a higher level of work will evolve on its own. But such acceptance can also be fueled by “left” sectarian disinterest in uniting with those with whom one has any important differences.
What comrades in local circles need, in order to carry out party-building effectively, is a network linking our organizations. (In the next chapter we discuss who should be in the network; here we discuss the need for this organizational form.) We think that a party-building network should, in this period, carry out the following functions:
(1) Paying due attention to security, assess its own forces–their number, geographical and industrial concentration, and strengths and weaknesses in doing theoretical, practical, and organizational work;
(2) Struggle for broad agreement on an agenda for the two (related) main kinds of theoretical work: all-round study of the features of U.S. society, and applying Marxism-Leninism to the various political line questions facing the proletariat (goals and tactics of trade union work, demands for which the party will fight regarding the international role of the U.S., national question, woman question, etc.);
(3) Divide the work of studying U.S. society, insuring representation of different views in the body that takes up each question; submit each plan for research projects to the whole network for suggestions; circulate questionnaires covering the areas of social investigation so that the comrades responsible can draw on nationwide experience; discuss and debate theoretical works as they are completed;
(4) Take up, in the agreed order, political line questions for joint study and struggle, using a theoretical journal, privately circulating papers, conferences and forums, etc.;
(5) Develop outlines or questionnaires to guide preparation of good summations of practice; circulate and comment on each others’ summations;
(6) Where the level of unity is high enough, coordinate practical campaigns (e.g., building a nationwide caucus in an industrial union);
(7) Arrange for comrades to travel and meet each other to learn about conditions elsewhere, and to lessen reliance on possibly self-serving written materials as we develop assessments of each other;
(8) Assign task forces to prepare periodic objective reports on the most influential parties and organizations in the rest of the movement, with comrades “specializing” in each organization and reporting on developments in their line and practice.
Here we want to make some tentative suggestions as to how a party-building network could function internally, in addition to what we have already said about the functions of the organization and what we said in Chapter II about how it could organize theoretical work. We state these to help concretize the idea of the organization we are talking about, but many organizational details would depend on the number and character of the forces participating.
1. There would probably be an elected steering committee, and depending on the size of the steering committee, perhaps a smaller executive committee. The steering committee would survey the strengths and weaknesses of our forces; organize security; establish communications, reports, and publications (in accordance with plans agreed on by the entire organization); identify programmatic and other questions that require study and struggle; decide priorities for the order in which such questions are to be taken up; make assignments of comrades to bodies doing theoretical work; organize the work of monitoring the communist press; prepare conferences.
2. Neither the steering committee nor other bodies established by the network would be empowered to answer, for the organization, important questions that are still controversial within it. They should, however, help identify questions and focus the struggle.
3. On questions within the steering committee’s authority, every group participating in the network could struggle within the steering committee for its views. On matters fundamentally affecting the work of the network, member groups could also take their disagreements to the entire organization.
4. The organization would set approximate standards for the amount of suport that each local group and individual should contribute to the network as a whole. Such support includes not only financial contributions, but commitment of a specified portion of its available manpower to the work of the network. (This would obviously vary as to the size of each group, but there should also be flexibility because of varying strengths and weaknesses of each group.)
5. Provision should be made regarding the voice, vote, and contributions to the work by individual comrades unaffiliated with any local group. We think that independents should be permitted to participate, but that they should be strongly encouraged to join or form a constituent group.
6. IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT EACH GROUP COMMIT ITSELF TO HAVING ITS ENTIRE MEMBERSHIP STUDY AND DISCUSS THE DIFFERENT POSITIONS THAT ARE PUT FORWARD WHEN THERE IS STRUGGLE OVER QUESTIONS OF IDEOLOGY OR POLITICAL LINE WITHIN THE NETWORK. Some comrades, of course, can and should be more responsible for each circle’s relations with the network. But the struggle for unity and the correct line requires that each group do all that it can to avoid the circle spirit exemplified by today’s larger organizations, where the members place unjustified confidence in their leaders’ views, and the leaders too often devote their attention to proving that they are right and outside critics are wrong. Avoiding this problem means letting all groups which participate in the network reach every other comrade with our views, and letting each of us influence–in an informed manner–the positions our own group takes and the contributions it makes to the struggle.[2]
It would be a grave mistake to try to form another geographically dispersed, democratic-centralist organization in this period, and it was a mistake when the R.U., C.L., O.L., A.T.M., etc., each formed such organizations. The network form which we have proposed is a necessary transitional organization, before democratic centralism can be used in a geographically dispersed organization.
People who disagree and think that the organizational form adopted by the groups that later declared themselves the vanguard party was correct generally do not consider the issue of the correct form of organization open to question. In fact, most organizations which put this line into practice mention it only in passing, seeing no need to argue for it.[3] Many “independents” and members of small collectives accept the same view. Their own organizational status is due only to the fact that they have been unable to find a larger, democratic-centralist organization with which they have enough agreement on line to join, on a principled basis. This incorrect line on organization is so pervasive in our movement that we consider it necessary to discuss its fallacies at some length.
To begin with, the Leninist principle on democratic centralism as a form of organization is this: communists should form a democratic-centralist party as soon as the foundations for it have been laid, not organize themselves according to democratic centralism everywhere and always. Before helping form a centralized, nationwide organization in Russia, Lenin labored to unite local Marxist circles into the Iskra organization. Many circles, obviously believing that the newspaper was playing a positive role, joined it and worked cooperatively to submit correspondence and distribute it, but they were not under the discipline of the editorial board. Lenin’s position on the agrarian question, for example, was not binding on members of the circles linked to Iskra until that position became part of the party program. For another example of the conditional propriety of democratic centralism, the Communist Party of China, formed with only vague programmatic and tactical unity, was appropriately decentralized in the early years. Many of Mao’s actions were in conflict with the line of party leadership and would have caused his expulsion from a more disciplined party, organized on the Leninist model. Later, when a much higher level of unity was achieved, the party became truly democratic centralist.
Comrades with whom we have discussed the issue of correct forms of organization in the present conditions have pointed to three reasons why they think that relatively large,[4] democratic-centralist organizations are needed. First, they say, only this form permits us to provide coordinated, nationwide leadership of mass movements and supplies us with the agitational and propaganda materials which we need in our practice. Second, only this form permits the extensive study and investigation required for carrying out our theoretical tasks. Third, and closely related to the first two, the larger democratic-centralist form is said to be needed to develop political line by tying theory to practice, so that information on widespread experiences in the practical struggle can be summed up centrally.
The form is certainly the best for carrying out these functions, but only after the conditions for using it have been created. These conditions do not yet exist.
An organization which is geographically dispersed (i.e., not concentrated in a single locality) and applies well-developed centralism (authoritative party press, central decisions to undertake nationwide campaigns, disciplined adherence to tactical decisions of the majority or of leadership bodies, etc.) has adopted the Leninist party form, regardless of what it calls itself and regardless of whether it is in fact the vanguard party of the working class.[5] This form permits most members to concentrate on trying to lead the proletarian struggle, in a unified way, for they can rely heavily on centralized ideological and practical guidance and use agitational and propaganda materials written by those who are trusted to analyze topical events in the name of the organization.
The very nature of such an organization creates three preconditions for its formation: (1) an agreed (and correct) understanding of how the organization should function internally; (2) reliable leadership, i.e., leaders who not only seem persuasive and “more developed,” but who have, to at least some extent, proven their ability to solve the problems raised by revolutionary practice; and (3) agreement on the “aims and objects”[6] of the organization, i.e., its program.
We must clarify what we mean by democratic centralism before we explain why these conditions are necessary for its proper use. Some comrades mistakenly take our rejection of premature democratic-centralism to mean that members of a local collective ought to be free to implement and propagate whatever views they wish. We see a need for democracy (minority submits to the majority) as soon as a group has enough unity to consider itself an organization. Democratic centralism means that, in addition, lower bodies submit to higher bodies. One or more central leadership groups are set up, charged with conducting internal exchange of opinion on major questions of line, and making binding decisions for the party between its congresses. And on many lesser, but important, issues analyzed in the organization’s press, those entrusted with editing the central organ publish their analyses without wide internal discussion. This centralism, which is required to produce unity of action without intolerable delays in a large organization, is what we reject, in the absence of a program, proven leadership, and unity on a correct understanding of internal party life.
One of the main purposes of a program is to permit people to decide if they can submit themselves to the discipline of the party which has adopted the program. Knowledge of the agreed-on goals of an organization is essential for declaring readinesss to accept its decisions.
The program of a workers’ party, as we know, is a brief, scientifically formulated statement of the aims and objects of the struggle of the working class. The program defines both the ultimate goal of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, and the demands for which the party fights while on the way to the achievement of the ultimate goal.[7]
The programme must [among other things] formulate our basic views; precisely establish our immediate political tasks; point out the immediate demands that must show the area of agitational activity. . ..[8]
Any comrade, in order to subordinate himself or herself to the decisions of a large organization and its leadership, must know that members of the organization are agreed on the “aims and objects,” the “basic views,” “immediate political tasks,” “immediate demands,” etc.[9] The organizational manual of the CPUSA published in 1935 stressed this relationship between programmatic agreement and acceptance of discipline: “Party discipline is observed by the Party members and Party organizations because only those who agree with the program of the Communist Party and the C.I. [Communist International] can become members of the Party.”[10]
It was our analysis of how to organize U.S. communists who can agree on the situation and our tasks that first led us to conclude that a program is needed for unification into a democratic-centralist organization, but some study showed us that this conclusion is also orthodox Leninism. Lenin struggled for years to win the Russian Marxists to the need for forming what we now call a Leninist party. But his polemics were for the formation of a democratic-centralist party as soon as the development of the movement permitted it. The 1898 founding congress of the RSDLP failed to create anything different from the previously existing autonomous circles. For several years after this Congress, Lenin opposed the convening of a second congress to try to unify them into a genuine democratic-centralist party. That congress did not take place until 1903. First it was necessary to use Iskra (a newspaper Lenin founded) to unite the Social-Democrats ideologically around the correct lines on “the aims and objects of the Party” and to “ascertain what sort of a party was wanted.”[11] This is the context of the oft-quoted statement from the Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra (1900):
Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation. Otherwise our unity will be purely fictitious, it will conceal the prevailing confusion and hinder its radical elimination.[12]
One of the preconditions for organizational unity of the local circles was consolidation around a program:
At the present time [1899] the urgent question of our movement is no longer that of developing the former scattered “amateur” activities, but of uniting–of organization. This is a step for which a programme is a necessity.[13]
To establish and consolidate the Party means to establish and consolidate unity among all Russian Social-Democrats, and, for the reasons indicated above, such unity cannot be decreed, it cannot be brought about by a decision, say, of a meeting of representatives; it must be worked for. In the first place, it is necessary to work for solid ideological unity which should eliminate discordance and confusion that–let us be frank!–reign among Russian Social-Democrats at the present time. This ideological unity must be consolidated by a Party programme.[14]
Before there was programmatic unity, Lenin certainly did not ignore the work of establishing contacts with different Social-Democratic circles. In fact, by the time Iskra was established, one of its aims was to build practical organization through its channels of correspondence and distribution. Lenin was not, however, struggling then to get the circles to join in a big democratic-centralist organization. The struggle for that form of organization was the struggle for how the party itself should be organized.
Lenin’s explanation of the need to include “the programme question” in the polemics of the day (1899) makes it clear that one of the purposes of the program is to establish what must be agreed on for comrades to be members of the same unified, disciplined organization:
. . .[I]f the polemic [over differences of opinion among the Social-Democrats] is not to be fruitless, if it is not to degenerate into a personal rivalry, if it is not to lead to a confusion of views, to a confounding of enemies and friends, it is absolutely essential that the question of the programme be introduced into the polemic. The polemic will be of benefit only if it makes clear in what the differences actually consist, how profound they are, whether they are differences of substance or differences on partial questions, whether or not these differences interfere with common work in the ranks of one and the same party. Only the introduction of the programme question into the polemic, only a definite statement by the two polemicising parties on their programmatic views, can provide an answer to all these questions, questions that insistently demand an answer. The elaboration of a common program for the Party should not, of course, put an end to all polemics; it will firmly establish those basic views on the character, the aim, and the tasks of our movement which must serve as the banner of a fighting party, a party that remains consolidated and united despite partial differences of opinion among its members on partial questions.[15]
Finally, if any doubt remains on Lenin’s views of what it takes to unite separate local circles into a disciplined organization, this passage from One Step Forward, Two Steps Back should lay it to rest:
As long as we had no unity on the fundamental questions of programme and tactics, we bluntly admitted that we were living in a period of disunity and separate circles, we bluntly declared that before we could unite, lines of demarcation must be drawn; we did not even talk of the forms of a joint organization, but exclusively discussed the new (at that time they really were new) problems of fighting opportunism on programme and tactics. At present, as we all agree, this fight has already produced a sufficient degree of unity, as formulated in the Party programme and the Party resolutions on tactics; we had to take the next step, and, by common consent, we did take it, working out the forms of a united organization that would merge all the circles together.[16]
To sum up: Lenin demanded that the Russian Social-Democrats organize themselves professionally in a single, nationwide, disciplined, democratic-centralist party; but he insisted that in order to do so, they had to struggle for agreement on a program. The fact that those U.S. organizations without programs do not call themselves parties is not the issue. What matters is not the label but the reality. And these groups, as well as the admitted parties, prematurely adopted the form of a centralized organization to which comrades should subordinate their independent views only because of programmatic unity.
The “pre-party” parties in this country reversed Lenin’s position on the formation of a democratic-centralist organization requiring unity on a program. As we said to the CPUSA/M-L recently,
Rather than a program being required for building a united organization on a principled basis, the MLOC’s political bureau has written us that “a correct program. . . can only arise out of the protracted struggle of a democratic centralist, national organization to organize the proletariat and its allies against the U.S. bourgeoisie and to combat opportunism.”
Instead of developing its program in open polemics that took up in a systematic way those programmatic questions which are controversial among U.S. communists, the MLOC–again like the other parties–elaborated much of its line through a process of its leadership determining the answers and its rank and file accepting them.
This has caused at least three undesirable results. First, whether by intention or not, comrades have received several years’ training in giving little credence to the views of communists outside your organization who differ with you. Second, despite a program which is certainly Marxist-Leninist overall, there remain in it a few fundamental, and very serious, opportunist errors. They are on matters for which the MLOC leadership seems to have a blind spot. But an open, serious, organized political struggle–like the several years of struggle that preceded the Russian Marxists’ adoption of a program–[might] have produced a clear majority for the correct line.
Third, the absence of such an open struggle in our movement, with polemics printed and debates held in a manner that all ordinary communist activists could follow them, has perpetuated our disunity. Large numbers of comrades who accept one or another opportunist line have never been forced to examine their own views in the light of a serious challenge to them.[17]
What was substituted for unity on program when today’s parties originally adopted the democratic-centralist party form was, in most cases, agreement on general principles of Marxism-Leninism, common rejection of opportunist lines of pre-existing organizations, some general agreement on the immediate tasks facing communists, unity on a few questions of political line, and–too often–white chauvinism or narrow nationalism.[18]
And this is only the optimal situation. For many comrades, this level of unity was not based on any conscious attempt to analyze these questions objectively. The line agreement which they developed with the organization which they were in or close to was, too often, not the product of a struggle to study opposing lines as well and look for the truth. Rather, it came mainly from a desire to see those to whom one is already close and who seem honest to be the true revolutionaries, and to join their organization. Moreover, as most of us first learned about Marxism-Leninism, “our understanding of M-L-MTTT was shaped by the organization we had the most contact with,” as the authors of the pamphlet The Degeneration of PRRWO: From Revolutionary Organization to Neo-Trotskyite Sect point out.[19] When we let line unity develop in this manner, we fail to grasp that
[o]ur comrades. . . should take a sniff at everything and distinguish the good from the bad before they decide whether to welcome it or boycott it. Communists must always go into the whys and wherefores of anything, use their own heads and carefully think over whether or not it corresponds to reality and is really well founded; on no account should they follow blindly and encourage slavishness.[20]
But even principled unity based on general ideological principles, a view of other organizations in the movement, and general agreement on party-building tasks and a few issues of political line is not sufficient. We can see this concretely by returning to the question which is immediately before us, that of the correct form of organization for the “independent” individuals and collectives in the communist movement who can agree on our tasks for this period. Certainly many of us who do not accept any existing party as being on the correct path can, through the current polemics, agree generally on the errors of those organizations and on our own tasks. Should we form a new centralized organization (or, if we found an existing one with the same line, should we merge into it)? After all, while such an organization would not have a program for proletarian revolution, it would at least be able to unite on a program for its work in building the party, i.e., for its work in the immediate period. And, as the P.U.L. points out, the struggle for this kind of program would give us a fairly firm foundation of ideological unity.[21] For we can make a good start at learning the Marxist stand, viewpoint, and method in thorough struggle over several critical questions facing the movement, without having completed that struggle on even a majority of such questions.
No, this is not enough for a larger, democratic-centralist organization. For agreement on our tasks in this period would include agreement on the need for practical work in the proletariat. There is no consensus yet on how extensive such work should be today, but there is near-unanimity that some level of practice is required. But a party form of organization is useful only when there is agreement on the content of that practice as well.
Comrades who disagree with us on the ability of a looser organization of collectives to carry out our tasks in this period invariably point to the pressing need for the agitational and propaganda materials of the sort that only the larger, preferably nationwide, democratic-centralist organizations can provide, with their newspapers and journals. It is true that communists in small collectives cannot develop on our own the agitational and propaganda materials which we need for our local practice. What we need–short of the party itself–is an organizational form linking these collectives which will permit all of us to examine the materials produced by other groups in our network and use or adapt those which we think are good. Moreover, we would be foolishly sectarian not to cull the literature produced by the existing parties and use what we agree with in that literature. But there is only one way to have a publication or publications which consistently put out agitational and propaganda materials with which we agree, on the questions which we must discuss in our practice (e.g., the international situation; the current state of, and trends in the development of, U.S. capitalism; the relationships of concretely described classes to each other in this society; strata in the working class; tactics in the trade union struggle; the different national questions; etc.). The ability to rely on publications about these topics presupposes that the analyses printed flow from programmatic unity on the questions taken up. Our collective is as hungry as anyone else for a regular source of reliable agitational and propaganda materials based on current U.S. reality, but there is no organizational shortcut for creating such a source. If someone else edits these publications, our group can use them only to the extent that we agree with the line put forward on each topic. If we edit them, anyone else’s use of them would be subject to the same limitations.[22]
This matter of who does the editing brings us to the second condition for the establishment of a dispersed democratic-centralist organization, or party: the development of proven ideological and practical leaders whom we can elect to the central bodies. Democratic centralism is a division of labor. Comrades on the leading bodies, though bound by a program and by the decisions of occasional congresses, are responsible for analyzing and synthesizing the work reports and statements of views of numerous party members and party organizations, along with all available data about current political, economic, and social events and trends, and propagating the correct Marxist-Leninist line on the questions to which the rank and file of the party must respond in their practical work.
. . .[T]he newspaper can and should be the ideological leader of the Party, evolving theoretical truths, tactical principles, general organizational ideas, and the general tasks of the whole Party at any given moment.”[23]
Further, the “direct practical leader of the movement” (which, under Russian conditions, had to be a committee separate from the ideological leadership), should, in Lenin’s view at least, have the duties of
maintaining personal connections with all the committees, embracing all the best revolutionary forces among The Russian Social-Democrats, and managing all the general affairs of the Party, such as the distribution of literature, the issuing of leaflets, the allocation of forces, the appointment of individuals and groups to take charge of special undertakings, the preparation of demonstrations and an uprising on an all-Russian scale, etc.[24]
A well-functioning party should provide plenty of channels for internal struggle throughout the organization, channels which clearly seem missing from the existing parties. But it must also be capable of responding rapidly, in a unified way, to changing conditions. Moreover, its members should be able to obtain written agitation and propaganda from bodies which they can rely on, rather than having to study and independently analyze every new development in the class struggle.
The relationship between centralism and democracy needs a great deal of further study and struggle, but major deviations are identifiable now. One is the bureaucratic centralism and lack of open internal struggle of the existing parties, where a slavish attitude toward the positions promoted by leadership on controversial questions is strongly encouraged. Even many programmatic issues, left open at the time the group adopted democratic centralism, have been “handed down” by leaders without any serious opportunity for the rank and file to study alternatives and engage in struggle. The other deviation, which is usually expressed in comrades’ criticisms of the bureaucratic centralism of the parties, is an idealized concept of full internal discussion, on every new development, before anything appears in the press or any decisions are made and implemented on the party’s position. The fact that full use of democratic centralism does mean a division of labor that entrusts serious ideological and practical responsibilities to leadership is why communists’ ability to identify reliable leaders is another precondition for use of the democratic-centralist party form.
Assignments to leadership cannot successfully be made at random, of course, nor is it satisfactory to simply let those who took the initiative in building the organization evolve into its ideological and practical leadership. For there are few people who can fulfill these responsibilities well, and it takes experience for them to develop. Furthermore, they can only be judged by those who must elect them after the rank and file have seen their work, while they acquired that experience.
“Political parties,” and the same would apply to any organization structured along party lines, “as a general rule, are run by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative, influential, and experienced members, who are elected to the most responsible positions, and are called leaders.”[25] In “running a secret organisation,” they retain “leadership of the whole movement, not by virtue of having the power, of course, but by virtue of authority, energy, greater experience, greater versatility, and greater talent.”[26]
Our movement will produce such people, and they need not be Lenins or Maos before we can elect a central committee. Some leaders might be developing in the parties which exist today. Others will come forward in the course of the theoretical and practical struggles of a party-building network. As they do, and as other conditions for forming the party are created, we will know who they are from the role they play in creating those conditions.[27] But comrades should not be relying on a few apparently more developed comrades to provide ideological and practical leadership that can be accepted with a high level of confidence, without having seen that leadership tested in struggle. Hence our conclusion that not only a program, but a history that produces leaders and permits us to identify them, is a prerequisite for the adoption of the democratic-centralist form of organization.
The leadership question is the one we pose to those who believe that a geographically dispersed, democratic-centralist organization is necessary for the development of political line by uniting theory with practice. For example, the Workers Party for Proletarian Socialism, which to its credit has stated its views on this point openly, writes,
To correctly put into practice the mass line and to raise perceptual knowledge to a rational level require a democratic-centralist organization. . . .It is the blending of skills and the organization of human activity in continuous mass practice and theoretical development that provide the mechanism for the creation of new knowledge and the articulation of perceptual knowledge into rational knowledge-usable to a revolutionary party in service to the people. In an overall sense, the division of an organization into levels corresponds to a division of labor according to the different stages in the theory of knowledge.
How does the mass line function? Highly trained on-line (working) militants and cadres perform accurate investigation of the objective and subjective conditions in the area where they are working. This perceptual knowledge is summarized and passed to the next cadre level. The higher up in the organization the knowledge is passed, the more it becomes integrated with knowledge from numbers of other units, being constantly systematized and summed up as it goes. At the level of the Center, the perceptual understanding of numbers of units is integrated with world-historical knowledge including Marxist-Leninist theory (which in its turn came from the summing up of world revolutionary practice). The result is rational knowledge. . . .By this division of labor, by the assignment of the best organizers to do on-line work and the best theoreticians with a good class standpoint to process knowledge, we can achieve unity of practice and theory–praxis [sic].
. . .Thus a democratic-centralist organization, by its very structure, has the potentiality to resolve the contradiction between knowing and doing, theory and practice. It has the capacity to generate and implement lines.
. . .Now, compare the profound capacity of a democratic-centralist formation with the amorphous, undefined and uncontrolled nature of the party-building movement.
. . .Where is the capacity for scientific method? Where is the division of labor? Where is the ability to process knowledge, to unify practice and theory?[28]
Knowledge does develop from a lower to a higher level, of course. If our movement encourages the widest circulation of reports on our investigations and our experiences in practice, some comrades–among the many who try–will be able to take the largely perceptual knowledge contained in these reports, study the data in light of the historical experience of the proletariat and real familiarity with current conditions, and raise the knowledge thus gained to a rational level and help us answer some of the burning questions facing our movement. Polemical struggles between proponents of differing “answers” will help produce the correct line. In addition, these struggles, in conjunction with the further practical experience of the movement, should eventually win over the majority of honest comrades to the correct line. That is the kind of “lower to higher” that we are capable of in this period.
The difference between this process and that of the best form for a party is not as great as WPPS’s picture of a multi-tiered data-processing mechanism suggests. Lenin opposed having several levels of organization interfering with the two-way flow of information and directives between leading bodies and basic party units. We think that he was correct in arguing that, to get the broadest national view, the central leadership needs the summations of local party committees and a large sampling of reports from those most directly involved in practice.[29] Interspersing a lot of intermediate summation steps, as WPPS proposes, would only dilute the accuracy of the information received by the leadership.
So the question is, can we now carry out a division of labor in which one reliable center evaluates these reports from basic local units and, in the main, develops the line for all of us, freeing the rest of us to devote most of our attention to implementing it? Or do we, lacking both that leadership and the program that we have democratically accepted as setting out the basic political line already, need to spread the functions much more until the basis for centralization develops?
The movement has already proved wrong the WPPS call for this “division of labor, by the assignment of the best organizers to do on-line work and the best theoreticians with a good class standpoint to process knowledge.”[30] The proof is the opportunist leadership of the many parties–declared and otherwise–which have tried to do this. No doubt their leaders seemed capable to those who chose and accepted them. Yet their work has produced massively divergent results, none of which represents consistent Marxism. The same will be true of the work of our network of local circles for a painful period, but the difference is that we will not pretend otherwise and designate one of them as a higher body which guides the others.
We will return later to the question of how leadership can be evaluated, as well as the informal leading role that some forces will undoubtedly emerge to fulfill.
Comrades uniting in an organization must agree on how that organization will function. Is the Party of Labor of Albania correct in opposing the very concept of two-line struggle within a party? To what extent do deviations require expulsions, and to what extent can they be handled through ideological struggle? How could revisionists become so powerful in a Chinese party that had a revolutionary leading line? For that matter, how has it happened that, in party after party, full revisionist degeneration, not rebellion from below, has followed the emergence of revisionist leadership?
Was Lenin correct in insisting that party minorities should have representation on leading bodies and free access to party journals, to struggle for their views,[31] or was his position a relic of a pre-Bolshevization period? How much of the party’s resources should be devoted to the theoretical training of rank and file members? What does it mean that Lenin spoke both of “an organization of professional revolutionaries” and of a “mass party” in describing the party? How are we to apply his statements that a party’s membership policies and methods of organization should vary under different conditions? Should there be any difference between the organizational status of proletarian and non-proletarian members of the party? How can the party encourage the development of those of its minority and women members who would otherwise be less confident and less developed theoretically? How can it help remold the outlooks of its intellectuals?
To a large extent, of course, the answers to these and similar questions will be worked out satisfactorily only as we gain the experience of working in a party. On the other hand, failure to take such questions up consciously as part of the struggle to unite in a party would invite extremely harmful errors, either those committed by the existing U.S. parties (suppression of internal struggle, slavish attitudes of the rank and file towards leadership, theoretical underdevelopment of the rank and file) or, in reaction to the deviations of the other organizations, errors of ultra-democracy, organizational looseness, and lack of discipline.
Considering both the triumph of revisionism in almost all of the original communist parties and what appear to be the grave organizational errors of the anti-revisionist parties in the U.S., these questions of internal party life should be treated with the utmost seriousness prior to party-formation.
Our objections to premature adoption of the party form of organization are not based solely on Lenin’s opinions and our own logic. Our movement’s experience has provided ample proof of where the incorrect line on organization can lead. It is no accident that every one of the existing parties manifests such a high level of opportunism, including “left” sectarianism, in most cases. Not that all their opportunism flows from their line on organization; if anything, the same “get-rich-quick” desires and methods of solving problems that led to immediate adoption of the party form lead as well to opportunist handling of many other areas of their work. But their solution to the problem of organization dialectically reinforces opportunism in many other areas.
Groups which decided to organize themselves like parties from the beginning naturally have tried to function as parties (R.U.’s early “Build the mass movement,” or the later insistence of many others on focusing practically all their resources on broad mass work). Their belief that they already have the leadership, the line, and the press that the communist movement needs strengthens their inclination to engage in polemics aimed at justifying their separate existence and trying to get all communists to join them, rather than polemics aimed at helping an entire movement settle the questions facing it. And their rank and file, trained to “accept leadership” rather than use their own heads in a particularly confused and divided movement, slavishly “defend the line” rather than read others’ polemics and struggle with an open mind. The choice to work as a party reinforces their blindness to the difficult tasks that must be carried out before a real Marxist-Leninist party can be formed.
Finally, it is no accident that, after a few years on this “left” sectarian path of acting like the party, they wake up one day to the realization that they are The Party and need only to reduce their program to writing and change their name.
We have been asked whether we think that the existing parties should disband, particularly since by now they are undoubtedly satisfied that they have met the preconditions we list. This is a moot point, because they do not care what we think about whether they should disband. For the record, however, yes, the interests of the proletariat would best be served by their disbanding and their members joining a party-building network, because each party is now under the hegemony of an opportunist line. A more likely possibility for breaking this hegemony is that, after several years, the forces who do form a network will have a strong enough organization to propose a “unity committee” to one or more of the parties. We would challenge them to forms of struggle in which the rank and file of all groups will be exposed to the polemics. (Such a challenge would be accepted, of course, only under conditions favoring unity that do not exist today.) We go further into the question of unity with other communists in a later chapter.
To return to the subject at hand, we want to emphasize that those of us not about to join the existing parties must not make the mistake of rushing to form an undeclared one of our own. It would be equally vulnerable to opportunism, since we have neither a program, nor leadership that we know to be developed and tested, not just impressive but careerist, nor assurance that we have learned the lessons of historical experience in the application of democratic centralism.
We agree completely that the democratic-centralist form, the party form, is best in general for systematically gathering and evaluating information on a nationwide basis, as well as for testing lines in practice on a broad scale. Failure to have such a party holds back the development of political line, as it holds back all our work. But, again, there are no shortcuts; we will not develop that line by entrusting the duties of developing it to comrades who are a few months ahead of the rest of us in adopting and propagating what seems to be a correct analysis of the current situation and our tasks, any more than the existing organizations have succeeded in doing so by that means.
Impatient adoption of the party form before conditions for it had been prepared is another serious example of widespread ultra-leftism in party-building line. What communists must do is build the pre-party organization that can prepare those conditions.[32]
The fact that the organization we propose will still be composed of local circles with some autonomy leaves some comrades with whom we have discussed these ideas deeply concerned.
Some, unduly overwhelmed by the immensity of our theoretical tasks, say that only a large organization, organized along party lines, can carry out those tasks. “If one’s line is correct,” said Chou En-lai, “even if one has not a single soldier at first, there will be soldiers. . ..” The obverse, however, is not true: it does not take a whole army to develop the correct line. As we pointed out earlier, the roles played by Lenin and Mao in analyzing their societies and charting the revolutionary path show that even a single tremendously talented and energetic person can make a tremendous contribution, even if it is not perfect. We see no such leaders in our movement today, but the combined work of a number of people, even in only a pre-party network, can lead to a qualitative leap in the application of science to an analysis of the U.S.
Moreover, local collectives–linked together as we have described–actually have strengths for this kind of work. Our inability to rely on central bodies to provide us with ideological leadership means that now, even more than in the future, comrades need to “use their own heads” in considering questions of theory and line. Local, fairly small groups are particularly well suited to letting all members sit down in a room and struggle for the correct line on questions being considered.
Local units of a party-type organization are the form reflecting a commitment to discuss, implement, and report on the effectiveness of the line coming from leadership. In contrast, autonomous local organizations are the form reflecting a commitment to take equal responsiblity for trying to develop and evaluate theory and political line. They encourage individual members to see their role in developing the views that will be circulated with the circle’s name on them.
They also permit development of a higher level of internal unity than should be required of a party. A party can handle a broad range of important tactical disagreements, as long as there is programmatic agreement, open and aboveboard struggle, and adherence to discipline in testing the lines decided on by leadership or party congresses. But at a time when our tasks are like Lenin’s tasks of studying the society and charting the path for its revolutionary transformation–always in the course of participating in the practical struggle–collectives undertaking this work, or at least those which will emerge to play leading roles, need to be able to develop something closer to the unity of will and outlook that Lenin had within himself.
At the same time, we need the freedom of action that he had. In order for the correct lines to emerge, we need to “let a hundred flowers bloom,” understanding, of course, that the purpose of open debate is to permit us to close ranks around the correct line. Though we should coordinate the work and organize the struggle according to an agenda of topics, we should not divide labor in a centralist way and set up discipline that would convert the local units into rank-and-file groups of mainly “practical workers.” For then they could not take the initiative in developing particular views on their own, studying questions which they believe must be investigated, and publishing what they think. All of these are required if we are not to stifle the emergence of correct lines in a period when recognized leadership has yet to develop.
Getting into the habit of having this kind of internal unity and freedom of action has its dangers. Presumably part of the appeal of the circle spirit lies in the fact that this form of organization requires less discipline than a party does. Disagreement with a line is dealt with face-to-face, not by writing a letter to leadership in a distant city, hoping that they will grasp the point being made, and being satisfied with only a written reply or a statement in the newspaper responding generally to similar views being raised by a number of comrades. There is usually room for more prolonged debate aimed at consolidating all to the same view of a question, less settling of matters by vote.[33] And many will prefer our very inability to designate some as leaders of a party, and the greater equality of local units and individuals, to the “cog-in-a-machine” status which most of us will have once we are able to put together an organized party.
For these reasons, the organizational form which we are proposing is not well suited for helping comrades learn that the unity of Marxist-Leninists in a single party, with the necessary subordination of the minority to the majority and lower bodies to higher bodies, is more important than each of us being able to do what we think is correct in every situation. Failure to learn this well could only lead to the perpetual fragmentation of our movement, and continual splits in those organizations which do form.
However, the fact that small circles favor the growth of small-circle spirit does not permit us to deny that we are in a period when a network of circles is the best we are capable of organizing, in order to effect the transition to a democratic-centralist party. A comparison with a different problem makes this point clearer. Stalin wrote that periods of legality and tranquility tend to create a danger of rightism and reformist illusions in the party. This does not, of course, mean that in such times communists should adopt tactics appropriate for periods of crisis and revolutionary upsurge, in order to escape the right danger. Similarly, in a period when the appropriate level of organization is a pre-party network of local circles, what we can do about the circle spirit is recognize the danger, particularly in light of the “left” sectarianism which permeates many communists’ attitudes towards each other, and struggle against it.
Another objection to organizing in a network has come from comrades who think that unity can be built only in common practice. Objectively, this means building only local organizations. Comrades we know who hold this view cite the past failure of written polemics and verbal struggles to lead to much unity, and they conclude that debate has little value in settling questions.
It is true, of course, that some comrades, through a combination of opportunism and plain confusion, are so wedded to incorrect lines that they truly will be unable to see that they are wrong before experience, perhaps several years of it, proves them wrong. And there are undoubtedly die-hard opportunists who will never change their ways. However, the conclusion that polemics are fruitless overall is correct only if it is narrowed to the unfavorable conditions which have prevailed so far. It is certainly true when the polemicists resort to every bourgeois debater’s trick to try to prove the total correctness of their lines and discredit their opponents entirely. Further, no worthwhile results are obtained when comrades consider other views to be so self-evidently opportunist that they do not develop the polemic beyond throwing out a few arguments that will serve to arm the faithful. In addition, as long as democratic-centralist organizations insulate their rank and file from the polemics by persuading them that only their own press could possibly give the correct Marxist-Leninist point of view, we are often engaged in entirely futile struggles with opportunist leaders. Finally, many polemics have been between two incorrect lines, each of which strengthened the credibility of the other for its own adherents (e.g., the R.U./Black Workers Congress struggle on the Black national question, the A.T.M./Revolutionary Wing struggle on the E.R.A., and–in our opinion–the struggle on the international situation several years ago, when the main lines were those of the Guardian and the October League.)
Bad polemics, steadfast attachment to opportunist lines, slavishness within democratic-centralist organizations, and contests between two one-sided lines have given the movement enough bad experience with line struggle to make unwillingness to engage in “mere debates” understandable. But such unwillingness is incorrect just the same. Volumes of polemics written by every great Marxist since Marx himself attest to the fact that these leaders found that many erring comrades could be persuaded by writings based on reason, historical experience, and current facts. How could “the wide circulation of” What is to be Done? bring about “a complete ideological defeat for economism,” ending the doctrine’s considerable influence in Russia,[34] if arguments and polemics are just an idealist way of trying to win people over? Those who can form a trend within the movement that will initiate the building of a genuine vanguard party will have to learn to use polemics to teach and learn, or we will not unite for decades, as we each do our testing in practice of our own ideas. Obviously our practical experiences will play an important role in helping us judge the correctness of each others’ arguments on various questions, as will the demonstrable experience of other comrades. But we must not shrink from line struggle as not being worth the effort. This would be just another form of sectarianism, of going our own ways and perpetuating our fragmentation.
The Movement for a Revolutionary Left has put forward an organizational plan that is a step forward from separate small circles waiting for a party to develop, but only a small step. They call, as do we, for a national organization that is looser than a democratic-centralist party. But they see it mainly as a form where we will wait for communist unity to somehow develop. Those “who share a general anti-reformist/anti-ultraleftist perspective” can join, and their unity will develop as most people sum up the meaning of their experiences [in mass work] in the same way. . . .Gradually as experience was gained, and the unity of most of the people in the association rose organically on the basis of mutual trust and collective wisdom achieved on the basis of struggling together, a genuine pre-party organization would emerge.[35]
With no attempt at justification, here is classic rightist fear both of narrowing our forces to those who have a common purpose and plan and of intervening consciously in the course of events that they hope will spontaneously produce unity around a correct line. But just as bourgeois ideology makes workers sum up their experience erroneously all too often, there is no reason on earth to assume that without systematic and collective study and struggle, “most people” will arrive at the correct lines on all the burning questions facing us simply by summing up their own experiences. To this fallacy the M.R.L. adds the truism that “[p]atience is a virtue and we must take as long as necessary to achieve both the experience and consensus necessary to create an organization with a serious potential for becoming a party,” and turns it into an unrevolutionary willingness to wait forever in the hopes that the spontaneous forces of history will eventually do our party-building work for us.
What U.S. imperialism has in store for the people of the world is too ghastly for us to adopt the M.R.L.’s brand of patience.
Other comrades close to the Organizing Committee for an Ideological Center have asked us how our proposal for a pre-party network differs from the “ideological center” they seek to develop, since they see real similarities. In part we do not know, because the OCIC has yet to develop an explicit party-building plan. Rather than forming a pre-party organization united on its tasks and ways of accomplishing them, they have grouped those who agree on a certain view of the international situation and who have some unity on a view of the communist movement. But this decision itself implies some serious differences between us and them on party-building, differences we examine in our next chapter, which takes up the question of who should unite in joint party-building work. On the other hand, whatever real similarities there are between our proposals and views of some OCIC members are, we think, a good thing. Any such similarities also cast doubt on the premise that using the international situation to “demarcate” the party-building forces is useful, if comrades from entirely different sections of the movement are arriving at similar conclusions on the current tasks of communists.
Other comrades have pointed out some resemblance between our network proposal and the Workers Congress’s “Iskra plan.” The W.C. plan is, by their own admission, a carbon copy of Lenin’s solution to the problems of disorganization and ideological disunity prevailing among the Russian Marxist circles in 1900. Lenin was the motive force behind the founding of a national newspaper (Iskra), the purposes of which were to break through the local perspective of the various circles by providing Marxist analysis of national and international political and economic events; serve as a forum for struggle over differences (by opening its columns to all contributors) and, in particular, promote the correct line on disputed questions; permit the sharing of experiences; and develop the organizational techniques of secret communications, smuggling, etc., that would be needed for an illegal party to function in autocratic Russia. The Workers Congress offers its newspaper, The Communist, for the same functions here, and continually urges comrades to contribute to it and see it as their own paper.
We stated our disagreements with this plan in an article we submitted to The Communist:
. . .[T]he W.C.’s “Iskra plan”. . . must depend on conditions here being comparable to those existing in Russia at the turn of the century, when Iskra met the needs of the Russian Marxists. For certainly the use of an Iskra-type newspaper in party-building is not a universal principle of Marxism-Leninism. Of the other parties whose history we have read (the C.P.C., the P.L.A., and the Vietnam Workers Party), none used such a tool. As the Proletarian Unity League asked the W.C. some time ago, “Why didn’t the Third International alert the Albanians, or the Koreans, or others, to this ’right opportunist’ deviation?”[36]
. . .[W]e can identify some important features of the Russian situation that are absent today:
1) There were enough advanced workers for Lenin to demand the establishment of a newspaper at a level that would meet their needs, and we mean “advanced” according to the “Retrograde Trend” definition. Behind them was a “broad stratum” of intermediate workers, who were also socialists and participated in agitation. It was largely to meet the needs of such workers, and to benefit from their written contributions, that the paper was needed.
2) There was no national communist press to inform Marxist and other socialist workers about issues that went beyond narrow local concerns, or to permit the sharing of experience. Here The Communist is but one of many papers trying to play the role of Iskra.
3) We do not know how the editors of The Communist conceive of themselves, but in our opinion the U.S. communist movement has yet to develop ideological leaders with anything near Lenin’s consistent grasp of Marxism. Accordingly, no newspaper can play the guiding role in clearing up ideological confusion here that Iskra did in Russia, or in consistently providing “political exposure which trains proletarian leaders and the oppressed masses to systematically appraise all aspects of political life. . .. (Communist, 6/6/77, p. 2.)
4) By the time he launched Iskra, Lenin had completed major theoretical investigations of Russian social development that assisted him and others to “systematically appraise” topical events. Our movement, lacking even a class analysis of U.S. society, is incredibly weak in such theoretical work.
5) The organizational tasks facing the Russian movement, which included building an entirely clandestine organization, in a setting where Marxist circles kept being broken up by arrests, could be begun by starting with the Iskra organization’s work of building channels for smuggling correspondence and literature.
We do agree with the W.C. that those communists outside of the existing parties need to collaborate in a network to take up our party-building tasks, but there is nothing in the current U.S. conditions that convinces us that an Iskra network, i.e., a replay of the particular experience of the Russian party, is what is required in present conditions.
Rather than offer an editorial board that can present one more competing analysis of national and international events with the speed and topicality of a newspaper, communists should be concentrating our theoretical efforts on more basic investigations of the economic, political, and social structures of this society and the world at large, and on struggling out our theoretical differences. As to the best vehicle for polemics over our differences, surely [a long] article like this one is better suited for a journal than for a newspaper. And, though it is evident that our badly-needed exchange of practical experiences can be presented from time to time in the pages of a newspaper, there is nothing that makes this form superior to a journal, or the circulation of reports based on a questionnaire that would help elicit all-sided analyses.
Comrades in practice do need sources of topical exposures, but with the disunity that presently exists among us, all we can do is try to select those materials that we think are helpful and fairly correct on this or that subject, from the many competing communist newspapers. Adopting one of those papers as our central organ, or creating a new one, is possible only if one happens to have a very high level of unity with the editors of that paper. We would much prefer to see comrades engaged in systematic investigation and struggle to produce that unity, than have the focus be on rapid treatment of different issues as events raise them topically.
Incidentally, as if in confirmation of their weaknesses in trying to be this movement’s Iskra editors, the W.C. comrades informed us that publication of our article would be delayed while they prepared a reply, after attending to more pressing matters. Five months after we submitted it, the article still had not been printed.
The same remarks apply to the idea of Guardian clubs as a substitute for a party-building network. Though one can understand comrades who agree with the Guardian’s politics wanting to be in some kind of organization, it is difficult to take this club system seriously as a party-building form. It is closed to those with major disagreements with the Guardian’s political line, while professing no unity on party-building line. In its conception–of which there have been no announced changes–its activities were to consist of centrally-led study of Marxism-Leninism and of the Guardian’s political line, any kind of local practice, and supporting the newspaper materially and by spreading its influence.
Let us assume, however, that these functions will be integrated into what the Guardian staff has elaborated of a party-building line. That line holds that party-building is the uniting of Marxist-Leninists through ideological struggle and the study of concrete conditions in the U.S. Then consider Irwin Silber’s defense of “top-down” leadership of the ideological struggle and his failure to put forward any plan by which the different “tops” among the non-party forces can compete for ideological leadership. What emerges, then, is a plan to build a nationwide organization of active Marxist-Leninists by consolidating those individuals who already agree with the Guardian’s politics. While this plan will strengthen the political position and the always-desperate material position of the Guardian (sustainers were to be given preference as club recruits!), it ignores the many circles and individuals who have anywhere from serious to extreme political differences with the Guardian. This is the height of sectarianism, from those who supposedly consider uniting Marxist-Leninists to be party-building.[37]
Separate local circles, without an organization linking them, are incapable of struggling over differences systematically, and they are tremendously handicapped in theoretical work and in exchanging the lessons of practical experience.
Yet it would be a mistake to link them up in a nationwide democratic-centralist organization before struggling to unity on a program, for it is that struggle which provides the best chance for developing a consistent Marxist-Leninist political line, which assures that line agreement is principled, not evolved through bureaucratic centralism and slavishness; and which justifies the rank and file’s reliance on centrally-produced agitation and propaganda. Moreover, we should not adopt a division of labor that gives some comrades substantial authority in guiding an organization before the leaders have actually shown their qualifications in practice. The opportunist leaders of the existing parties are proof that giving the appearance of being “more developed” is not enough. The third precondition for successful use of democratic centralism is a good understanding of democratic centralism itself, a precondition shown crucial by the bureaucratic-centralist abuses of the existing U.S. parties and the degeneration of many other communist parties in the world.
In fact, a dispersed, democratic-centralist organization is a party, though it may not be a true vanguard party. The existing parties “leaped” to this form of organization without meeting any of the preconditions for its use. They were motivated by the same “left” impatience which, for most, causes their disdain for theory and their sectarianism towards communists with whom they differ. At the same time, this “leftism” on organization reinforces their sectarianism, since it encourages members of each group to see their leaders, their press, their line as capable of meeting the needs of whatever honest communists there are in the movement. Moreover, adoption of the form of organization that was designed to permit communists to engage in the most widespread agitation and propaganda encourages their disinterest in our other tasks. When they pass from all this to including Party in the name of the organization, they take a relatively small step; the big one was adopting the democratic-centralist form as a “pre-party.”
The form we need for a pre-party organization is a network linking the local circles and individuals. Through it we must organize theoretical study and struggle and the debate over political line, exchange agitational and propaganda literature, discuss the lessons of practice, and keep up with developments in the rest of the communist movement. The network’s internal organization would depend on the forces involved; but the general principle is that the work would be centrally coordinated, while controversial questions would be settled through open struggle, rather than by designated authorities. The rank and file of every group should study the debates on major issues.
History disproves the view that only the democratic-centralist form permits the development of political line, though that form is superior once the preconditions for its use have been met. Nor is it true that a pre-party network is too organized because only joint practical experience can build unity.
Neither the “Iskra plan” nor the Guardian clubs can utilize the efforts of, and meet the needs of, all who can contribute to party-building. The OCIC could play that role, but only if it transforms itself into a body that bases its unity on a correct party-building line, not a particular line on the role of the two superpowers.
A properly organized party-building network will immeasurably speed our progress from the primitiveness of small circles to the advanced democratic-centralist form of organization, by vastly improving our ability to carry out essential theoretical and practical work.
[1] We decline to enter the debate over whether ideology, political line, or organization is “key” in the present period. We have seen nothing to support the assumption, made by many comrades in the past, at least, that communists’ party-building tasks go through these “periods.” It is clear from both the international communist experience and our concrete conditions that we have very great theoretical and practical tasks in this period. And it would be irrational not to also consider how to organize ourselves to carry out those tasks.
[2] We go more deeply into why this is an essential condition for building unity in our pamphlet Learning From Past Mistakes to Avoid Future Ones in the Struggle for Unity, pp. 3-7. 10-11.
[3] E.g., Revolutionary Cause, 11/75, p. 1.
[4] Large relative to local circles or collectives, that is. Even if the entire U.S. communist movement were in a single organization, it would be far smaller than what is eventually required for an effective revolutionary party.
[5] We develop this point further in the course of this chapter and in Chapter IX, especially pp. 145-47. The reader who is unconvinced of what, in the U.S., is an unusual use of the term party, should bear with us and focus on the central question discussed at this point (what are the preconditions for forming a national democratic-centralist organization?), putting aside for the moment whether such organization should be called a party or not.
[6] History of the CPSU(B), p. 38.
[7] Ibid.
[8] “A Draft Programme of Our Party,” LCW 4: 230.
[9] We gave examples of major programmatic questions on p. 21, above.
[10] Peters, The Communist Party: A Manual on Organization (1975 Proletarian Publishers’ reprint), p. 23. See also SW 1: 65.
[11] History of the CPSU(B), pp. 30-33, 38-39. (We note these pages not just for the quoted phrases; they also outline the history we have just stated.)
[12] LCW 4: 354.
[13] “A Draft Programme. ...” LCW 4: 230 (emphasis added).
[14] Declaration of the Editorial Board. . ., p. 354.
[15] “A Draft Programme. . .,” LCW 4: 231.
[16] LCW 7: 385.
Lenin often used the term tactics as we generally use strategy now. (See, e.g., his Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, or the synopsis of it in History of the CPSU(B), pp. 65-69.) We do think that unity on the strategy for revolution is required in a party or party-like organization. We follow the example of the party rules of the RSDLP and other parties in not stating this as a separate requirement for party membership because the program itself should state the party’s strategic plan.
[17] Party-Formation and the Circle Spirit: A Reply to the MLOC, p. 3.
[18] Most such groups did develop such unity around program and tactics fairly rapidly after formation. They did so, however, much less through study and struggle than through total reliance on leadership, with the rank and file only learning to “defend the line.” The ability of groups that now call themselves parties to adopt their explicit programs with very little struggle reflects the fact that these programs belatedly summed up lines that had long been put forward in the parties’ publications.
[19] (P. 2.) And point out, and point out. . .. This pamphlet by former PRRWO members is valuable, but it fails to analyze the internal basis for comrades’ acceptance of an opportunist line. Consequently it provides little guidance for avoiding similar problems, instead observing that the CPUSA’s revisionism left “a vacuum of ideological eclecticism,” which made the emergence of incorrect lines “only natural” (p. 9). Erroneous lines are “only natural” because of the pressure of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology, and because the social base of our movement makes most of us particularly receptive to such ideology.
Recognizing this fact means that whenever an idea seems correct, we must ask whether it does so because it puts a Marxist cover on the alien ideology that we each bring to this movement, or because an all-sided analysis of its practical effects shows that it will serve the proletariat. Forgetting to ask this question, comrades in and close to the existing parties do not critically examine what they are taught, once they accept centralist leadership.
[20] “Rectify the Party’s Style of Work,” MSR 227.
[21] P.U.L., p. 201.
[22] We certainly are not ruling out the development of joint literary forms for disseminating materials based on various lines and for providing the form and an agenda for struggling out line differences. Lenin’s Iskra played at least the latter role, and obviously to good effect. But when it did, it by no means claimed to be the central organ of a democratic-centralist organization, with members of circles working in the Iskra organization pledged in advance to propagate the views its editors put forward.
[23] Letter to a Comrade on Our Organizational Tasks, LCW 6: 234.
[24] Ibid.
[25] “Left-Wing” Communism. . ., LCW 31: 41.
[26] Letter to a Comrade. . ., LCW 6: 240.
[27] We should not know them by their real names, of course. There is no point in facilitating their arrests at the point when the bourgeoisie finds that communism in this country is too dangerous to retain its legal status.
[28] Proletarian Socialism, Vol. 1, 5/77, pp. 62-63.
[29] Letter to a Comrade. ... See also the Comintern’s Principles of Party Organization (Mass Publications: Calcutta), p. 38.
[30] Proletarian Socialism, p. 63. We rely on WPPS’s arguments because they are the only organization which, to our knowledge, has tried to defend the use of democratic centralism before the preconditions for its use have been met. Others holding similar views would probably not use such unusual expressions as “processing knowledge” to describe the role of leadership. But they should. Only this image of those with sharpest mental tools for mechanically “processing knowledge” permits WPPS to avoid the question of how our movement can develop and identify politically reliable leadership.
[31] One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, LCW 7: 347 ff.; To the Party, ibid., p. 458.
[32] As to the question of whether democratic centralism should be used in local organizations, we do not know. Obviously those that are too large to have frequent plenary meetings and which have comrades involved in a number of areas of work need separate units and a coordinating body. The responsiblities delegated to the coordinating body would depend entirely on the organization’s level of unity and on the known abilities of comrades available to take up some leadership functions. In general, we think that leadership should be entrusted with propagating and implementing positions that have been agreed on by the organization. As the group takes up new major issues, however, it should take a position only after full internal study and discussion. Leading comrades should, of course, help frame the issues, organize the struggle, and advocate positions.
[33] However, we have found that this “room for debate” can be illusory, too, even in a very small group. Sometimes we have spent too much time seeking unanimity, when we should have been testing a majority view and going on to discuss other questions.
[34] History of the CPSU(B), pp. 37-38.
[35] A Critique of Ultra-Leftism, Dogmatism and Sectarianism, pp. 86-87.
[36] P.U.L., p. 107.
[37] The Guardian club plan is explained in the 9/7/77 issue of the paper, pp. 12-13. The continuing failure to even try to integrate that plan into the needs of the party-building movement(s) as a whole is clear from the article on “The State of the Party-Building Movement,” 10/18/78, pp. 11-14.